
Class 
Book 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



Russell Sage Foundation 



FATIGUE .^ID EFFICIENCY 
A Study in Industry 



By 

Josephine H-oldmark 



Nev/ York 
Charities Publication Committee 
1912 



AUTHOR^S PREFACE 

ALMOST five years have elapsed since I first undertook, 
as Chairman of the Committee on the Legal Defense 
Lof Labor Laws of the National Consumers' League, 
to prepare the first of the briefs contained in Part II of 
this volume. 

I have related in Part I, from the lay point of view, a 
variety of technical matters, physiological, economic, and 
legal. In the desire to cite concrete particulars in support 
of all general or abstract statements, much space has been 
given to illustrations from contemporary industrial life. 
And since these matters are for the most part still contro- 
versial, effort has been made to give, in the footnotes, the 
confirming documentary authorities. Wherever it has been 
necessary to choose between public or private research in 
describing facts, preference has been shown to the reports of 
government investigation, since they are usually held to be 
the more impersonal records. 

I have endeavored throughout to steer a middle course 
between the technical and the popular, aiming to pursue 
the technical arguments only so far as they are essential for 
serious discussion, without involving the reader in technical 
intricacies needed only by the specialist. 

This was the principle followed also in preparing the 
material for Part 1 1 which was originally contained in various 
briefs. The initial suggestion so to present the world's ex- 
perience regarding women's hours of labor, in defense of the 
first woman's labor law before the United States Supreme 
Court, came from Mr. Louis D. Brandeis. I have described 
in Chapter IX his connection with these briefs. They were 
prepared under his personal direction, and have been used by 
him in the successful defense of various state laws limiting 
women's hours of labor. A special fund was raised by the 

vii 



Vlll AUTHOR S PREFACE 

National Consumers' League to meet the heavy expense of 
printing briefs of such large compass. They are reprinted 
here to meet a steady demand for documents in a sense 
historical, from colleges and libraries, as well as from persons 
engaged in the more practical business of securing labor 
legislation. The briefs are reprinted substantially intact, as 
they were submitted to the courts; for while, taken sepa- 
rately, they contain evidence and opinions of unequal worth, 
yet their main value consists in precisely the cumulative testi- 
mony and the unconscious unanimities of experience revealed. 

Thanks are due to many persons for their assistance in 
collecting the widely scattered material contained in the 
briefs. The Russell Sage Foundation cooperated with the 
National Consumers' League, supplying the funds for a 
small staff of readers, who under my direction covered a 
literature of wide but uncharted range. I am glad to ac- 
knowledge here the valuable assistance of Miss L. L. Dock, 
R. N., whose technical knowledge enabled her to supply 
most of the translations from French and German authorities 
quoted in the briefs. Dr. Ira P. Wile of New York kindly 
read all of the scientific authorities quoted in the briefs, and 
gave the benefit of his advice in the choice of such material. 
For access to the scattered files of European reports, and for 
other courtesies, I am indebted to several libraries, chief 
among them the Library of Columbia University, the Library 
of Congress at Washington, and the Library of the United 
States Bureau of Labor. To Dr. Zacher, of the German 
Imperial Insurance Office, I am indebted for material not 
otherwise easily accessible. 

In writing the text of Part I — a task which has been 
necessarily interrupted by the various cases and legislative 
work arising within the past four years — 1 have been con- 
stantly aided, in untold ways, by Mr. Brandeis' generous 
and stimulating counsel, without which this book would 
not have been undertaken, and for which 1 am more in his 
debt than these poor words can express. 

I am under great obligations to Dr. Frederic S. Lee, 
Dalton Professor of Physiology at Columbia University, for 



AUTHOR S PREFACE IX 

taking time, in the midst of his scientific activities, to read 
all the proof sheets of my text and to give the benefit of 
his criticisms in the field of which he is a master. 

The manuscript was read also by two other persons — 
my sister, Pauline Goldmark, and Mrs. Florence Kelley. 
To both I am indebted for valuable criticism. To Mrs. 
Kelley I owe gratitude also for years of the most generous 
association in the work of the National Consumers' League, 
and for the stimulus of that pure spirit of justice towards all 
mankind of which she is, as it were, a voice and an embodi- 
ment. 



iTABLE OF CONTENTS 
PART 1 

PAGE 

Introduction. By Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. v 

Author's Preface vii 

I. Introductory . 3 

II. The Nature of Fatigue 9 

1. One Factor in Fatigue: Accumulation of Waste Products . 11 

2. The Measurement of Muscular Fatigue 14 

(a) In animals 14 

(b) In man 18 

3. Another Factor in Fatigue: Consumption of Energy-Yield- 

ing Substance 20 

(a) The Chemistry of Muscular Contraction: How 

Glycogen is Supplied and Consumed ... 21 

(b) How Oxygen is Supplied for Muscular Contraction 23 

4. The Nature of the Fatigue Products 25 

5. The Nature of Nervous Fatigue 27 

(a) The Nervous System, Central and Peripheral . 28 

(b) The Location of Nervous Fatigue 29 

6. The Rise and Fall of Working Capacity 33 

(a) Work Continued Under Fatigue Costs More Effort . 33 

(b) The Nature of Training 35 

7. The Greater Morbidity of Women 39 

III. The New Strain IN Industry 43 

1. Speed and Complexity 43 

(a) The Telephone Service 43 

(b) Speed in the Needle Trades 53 

(c) The Textile Industry 56 

2. Monotony 58 

(a) The Canneries 59 

xi 



XU TABLE OF CONTENTS 



(b) Shoe Making . 

3. Physiology of Monotony . 

4 Noise 

5. Fatigue and Industrial Accidents 

-6. Rhythm 

7. Piece-Work ..... 

8. Overtime 



PAGE 

64 
67 
68 
71 
79 
82 
84 



Studies of Physical Overstrain in 



IV. Some Specific 

Industry 

1. Infant Mortality 

2. Low Birth Rate . . . . . 

3. Race Degeneration 

4. Lack of Information in the United States 

5. Medical Study of Working People in Forei 

Societies 

6. The Increase of Nervous Disorders . 

7. General Predisposition to Disease . 

8. A New Medical Scrutiny of Overwork 

9. Opportunities for Such Study in the United States 

V. Economic Aspect of Regulation: Fatigue and Out- 



gn 



Insurance 



90 
91 
95 
97 
100 

101 
103 
111 
112 
115 



Economic 

PUT 121 

1. General Experience in England 123 

2. General Experience in the United States .... 131 

3. An Experimental Study of Output 133 

4. The Experience of the Salford Iron Works at Manchester, 

England 138 

5. The Experience of the Engis Chemical Works near Liege, 

Belgium 144 

6. The Experience of the Zeiss Optical Works at Jena, Germany 155 

7. The Trend Toward Shorter Hours in the United States . 166 



VI. Regularity of Employment: Fatigue and Overtime 

Work 174 

1. Overtime as a Separate Issue 174 

2. Overtime and Regularity 176 

3. Efforts to Equalize Seasons 177 

4. The Adaptation of Customers 179 

5. The Policy of Persuasion by Consumers 181 

6. The Legal Prohibition of Overtime 183 



TABLE OF CONTENTS Xlll 

PAGE 

VII. The New Science of Management: its Relation to 

Human Energies 191 

1. Differences Between Ordinary Speeding-up and the New 

System 192 

2. Benefits of the New System 200 

3. Dangers of the New System 202 

4. Scientific Management and Collective Bargaining . . . 207 

VIII. The Enforcement OF Labor Laws 210 

1. The Rigid Law: Historical Development in Massachusetts. 211 

2. The Rigid Law: Historical Development in Great Britain 215 

3. The Elastic Law: Historical Development in Great Britain 217 

4. Elastic Laws in the United States 222 

5. Two Tests of Efficiency 227 

(a) The Annual Report 227 

(b) The Observation of Health in Industrial Establish- 

ments 232 

6. Some Technical Requirements in Factory Inspection . . 235 

IX. Labor Laws and the Courts 241 

1. The Police Power 241 

2. The "Freedom of Contract" Theory . . . . . 242 

The First Ritchie Case 243 

The Case of Holden v. Hardy 244 

The Lochner Case 245 

The Williams Case and its Challenge 246 

The Oregon Case and a New Line of Defense. . . . 250 

The Second Ritchie Case 252 

3. The Distinctions of Sex 252 

4. The Question of Discrimination 256 

X. Prohibition of Women's Night Work: a Prime Ne- 
cessity 258 

1. The International Convention on Night Work . . . 258 

2. The Case Against Night Work Abroad 264 

3. Night Work in the United States 268 

XI. Conclusion 277 

Index 288 



■\ 



XiV 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PART II 

The World's Experience upon which Legislation Limiting 
THE Hours of Labor for Women is Based 



I. The Dangers of Long Hours 

A. Causes 

(1) Physical Differences Between Men and Women. 

(2) The Greater Morbidity among Women 

(a) General Morbidity . . . . . 

(b) Duration of Illness Greater Among Women 

(c) Continuance at Work during Illness 

(d) Mortality .... 

(3) The New Strain in Manufacture. 

(a) Speed 

(b) Monotony .... 

(c) Piece-work .... 

B. The Nature and Effects of Fatigue 

(1) General Medical Views of Fatigue 

(2) The Toxin of Fatigue 

(3) Nervous Fatigue .... 

(4) Muscular Fatigue .... 

(5) The Greater Strain on Fatigued Muscles 

(6) The Physiological Function of Rest . 



(a) 
(b) 
(c) 



C. 



Rest Needed to Repair Expenditure of Energy 
Rest Needed to Repair the Deficit of Oxygen 
Adequacy of Resting Time Allowed between 
Working Hours .... 

1. In Ordinary Work .... 

2. In Work Involving Absorption of In- 

jurious Substances. 
Bad Effects of Long Hours on Health .... 



(1) 
(2) 
(3) 
(4) 
(5) 
(6) 



General Injuries to Health 

Injuries to the Female Functions and Childbirth 

Injuries to the Feet and Legs from Long Standing 

Injuries to Eyesight .... 

Injuries to Other Organs 

Relation between Fatigue and Diseases 

(a) General Predisposition 

(b) Fatigue and Infectious Diseases 



1 
1 
1 
10 
10 
15 
20 
23 
26 
26 
42 
48 
52 
52 
64 
69 
80 
88 
93 
93 
103 

111 
111 

114 
116 
116 
135 
142 
148 
151 
155 
155 
161 



TABLE OF CONTENTS XV 

PAGE 

(c) Liability of Working People to Nervous Dis- 

eases 163 

(d) Nervous Diseases and Statistics of Foreign 

Sickness Insurance Societies .... 169 

(e) Ages of Incidence 181 

(f) Nervous Disease and Heredity. . 183 

(g) Nervous Diseases and Overstimulation . . 185 
(h) Fatigue and Nervous Diseases .... 188 

D. Bad Effect of Long Hours on Safety 192 

(1) Incidence of Accidents 192 

(2) Fatigue of Attention 213 

E. Bad Effect of Fatigue upon Morals 220 

(1) General Loss of Moral Restraints . . . .221 

(2) Growth of Intemperance 227 

F. Bad Effect of Long Hours on General Welfare . . . 236 

(1) State's Need of Preserving Health 236 

(2) State's Need of Preserving Health of Women . . 246 

(3) The Double Burden of Working Women . . . 252 

(4) Effect of Woman's Overwork on Future Generations 260 

(5) Infant Mortality 269 

(6) Race Degeneration 276^ 

II. Benefits of Short Hours 286 

A. Good Effect on Morals: Growth of Temperance . . . 286 

B. Good Effect on General Welfare 290 

(1) General Benefit to Society 290 

(2) Benefit of Leisure and Recreation .... 302 

(3) Special Benefit of Evening Leisure for Family Life, 

Education, etc 310 

III. Shorter Hours THE ONLY Possible Protection . . 317 

A. Overlong Hours make Lightest Work Injurious. . . 317 

B. The Remedy: Shorter Hours 323 

C. The Method: Legislation 328 

IV. Economic Aspect of Regulation 339 

A. General Benefit to Commercial Prosperity 339 

B. Effect on Output 345 

(1) Shorter Hours Increase Efficiency and thus Result 

in Superior Output 346 

(2) Long Hours Reduce Efficiency and thus Result in 

Inferior Output 375 

C. Incentive to Improvements in Manufacture . . . 384 

D. Effect on Scope of Women's Work 387 



XVI 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



PAGE 

E. Effect on Women's Wages 395 

F. Adaptation of Customers to Shorter Hours .... 407 
V. Uniformity of Restriction 411 

A. Allowance of Overtime Dangerous to Health . . .411 

(1) The Excessive Length of Hours . . ... .411 

(2) Evening Work in Addition to Day Work . . . 417 

(3) Injury from Gas and Bad Air 194 

- (4) Lack of Sleep 422 

(5) Irreparable Overstrain 423 

B. Allowance of Overtime Dangerous to Morals . . 426 

(1) Loss of Family Life 426 

(2) Danger of the Streets at Night 430 

C. Allowance of Overtime Injurious to Output. . . . 433 

(1) Evening Work Results in Inferior Output. . 433 

(2) Output Impaired on Day Succeeding Evening Work 440 

D. Uniformity of Restriction for Regular Distribution of Em- 

ployment 444 

(1) Prohibition of Overtime Promotes Better Organiza- 

tion of Industry 444 

(2) Prohibition of Overtime Promotes Regularity of Em- 

ployment 450 

(3) Effect on Wages 456 

(4) Effect of Requiring Extra Pay for Overtime . . 461 

E. Uniformity Essential for Purposes of Enforcement . . 464 

F. Uniformity Essential for Justice to Employers . . . 472 

(1) To Encourage the Best Employers .... 472 

(2) To Check the Backward Employers .... 474 

G. Allowance of Overtime an Unnecessary Evil: Opinions of 

Officials 480 

VI. The Reasonableness of the Classifications in the Acts . 448 

A. Laundries 489 

(1) Present Character of the Business .... 489 

(2) Bad Effect on Health 493 

(3) Bad Effect on Safety 498 

(4) Bad Effect on Morals 498 

B. Mercantile Establishments 499 

(1) Hours of Labor in Illinois Mercantile Establishments 499 

(2) Nature of the Work: Comparison with F"actory 

Work 505 

(3) Bad Effect on Health 512 



TABLE OF CONTENTS XVll 

PAGE 

(a) General Injuries to Health .... 512 

(b) Injuries to the Female Functions and Child- 

birth 520 

(4) The Necessity for Legislation: Voluntary Action 

Insufficient 525 

(5) Adaptationof Customers to Shorter Hours. . . 528 

C. Millinery and Dressmaking Establishments . . . . 531 

(1) Seasonal Characteristics 531 

(2) Bad Effect on Health 536 

(3) Legal Limitation of Working Hours Promotes Better 

Organization in the Season Trades .... 541 

D. The Telephone Service 544 

(1) Character of the Business 544 

(2) Bad Effect on Health . .- 546 

(3) Overtime Work 547 

E. The Telegraph Service 549 

F. Work in Hotels and Restaurants . . . . . . 549 

G. Employment by a Common Carrier 556 

Opinion of United States Supreme Court in Muller v. State 

of Oregon 558 

Index 565 



PART I 
FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



\ 



INTRODUCTORY 

THE aim of this book is to present, as a new basis for 
labor legislation, the results of the modern study of 
fatigue. It seeks to show what fatigue is, its nature 
and effects, and to explain the phenomena of overwork in 
working people. It draws upon the scientific study of fatigue 
— one of the most modern inquiries of physiological, chemical, 
and psychological science — for aid in the practical problem 
of reducing the long working day in industry. 

Such a scientific basis of legislation has been almost 
wholly absent during the century which has elapsed since the 
first factory laws were enacted. First for lack of the neces- 
sary scientific equipment, and in recent times, for lack of that 
coordination of knowledge which should apply the teaching 
of science to the problems of a new industrial order, labor 
legislation has been deprived of the authoritative sanction 
which it might have. In this country, at least, the laws of 
fatigue, verified by years of experiment in the seclusion of 
the laboratory, have been practically unknown to those who 
have been most active in preserving for working people a 
minimum of human leisure. 

Yet such scientific authority is precisely what is most 
needed today for a more rational progress in the future 
than in the past; something more exact and demonstrable 
than the appeal to pity, less subject to temporary varia- 
tions than what the Italian physiologist Treves calls the 
"illusory profits of long hours.'' Just because the more 
cruel, dramatic exploitation of workers is in the main a thing 
of the past, exact scientific proof is needed of the more subtle 
injuries of modern industry, its practically illimitable speed 
and strain. After a hundred years of human experience 

3 



/ 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

throughout the world, it remains true in our own country 
that the most helpless workers are still, in respect to the 
length of their working hours, the least protected. 

The most recent government investigation of the iron 

' and steel industry in the United States shows* that of the 
172,671 employes whose hours of labor were reported in May, 
1910, nearly one-half (42.58 per cent) were kept at work 
seventy-two hours a week or over; that is, at least twelve 
hours daily on six days of the week. Nearly a quarter of all 
the workers (20.59 per cent) were kept employed eighty-four 

\ or more hours in the week; that is, at least twelve hours each 
day, including Sundays. In the largest single department 
in the industry, the blast furnaces, 88 per cent of the 31,321 
employes, engaged in both productive and general occupa- 
tions, were regularly kept at work seven days in the week. 

These prodigious and terrible figures concern the work 
of men. It might reasonably be supposed that the century- 
long effort to gain legal protection for women and children in 
industry would have safeguarded them from the bare possi- 
bility of such inhuman usage. 

But, to mention only random examples, young boys of 
fourteen years may still be employed all night long in Penn- 
sylvania, West Virginia, and other great glass producing 
states; girls upon reaching their sixteenth birthday in New 
York state may be employed twelve hours a day during five 
days of the week in factories,! and unlimited hours in stores 
during the season of "rush" before Christmas. The decision 
of the Illinois Supreme Court in 1910, upholding the constitu- 
tionality of the ten-hour law for women employed in fac- 
tories and laundries, is estimated to have freed from over- 
strain in Illinois alone more than 30,000 working women who 
were employed over ten hours a day. Some great manu- 

* Report on Conditions of Employment in the Iron and Steel Indus- 
try in the United States. Summary of the Wages and Hours of Labor, pp. 
36 and 57. Senate Document No. 301, 62nd Congress, 2nd Session, 1912. 

t The New York factory law was amended in 1912 so as to prohibit 
the employment of women more than ten hours in one day or fifty-four 
hours in one week. 



INTRODUCTORY 

facturing states, such as Alabama and Mississippi in the 
south, and New Jersey in the north,* set no legal limitation 
whatsoever upon the hours of women's employment. This is 
true also of other states, such as Delaware, Kansas, and 
Iowa, where manufacture is not yet foremost but where 
thousands of women are working overlong hours in laun- 
dries, restaurants, and department stores. Indeed, only 15 
stalest have enacted laws to check the overwork of women 
in the exhausting service of the modern department store; 
and conspicuous by their absence from among these, are 
states with large commercial centers, such as Maryland,* 
New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island. 

Like most human institutions, factory legislation has 
been founded on no a priori logic. It has been, rather, es- 
sentially illogical, the result of half-way measures and op- 
posing forces. During the nineteenth century, while agri- 
cultural Europe and America were gradually becoming in- 
dustrial and the whole face of nature reflected the new order, 
the history of factory legislation — the state's defense of its 
workers — has been devious advance and compromise. Self- 
interest on the one side, self-defense and philanthropy on the 
other, hampered by prejudices of every sort, — these for the 
most part have brought about such protection as exists today. 
Not man's foresight, but the inexorable results of labor long 
carried on counter to nature's laws, have been on the whole 
responsible for the meager protection which industrial com- 
munities have granted their workers. 

In the main, opposition to laws protecting working women 
and children has come from the unenlightened employer, who 
has been blind to his own larger interests and who has always 
seen in every attempt to protect the workers an interference 
with business and dividends. To this day, it is the shortsighted 

* New Jersey, Maryland and Kentucky have enacted ten-hour laws 
for women as this book goes to press (April, 1912). 

t California, Connecticut, Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michi- 
gan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Caro- 
lina, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin. The New York law applies only 
to girls up to 21 years. 

5 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

and narrow-minded spirit of money-making that is the most 
persistent enemy of measures designed to save the workers 
from exhaustion and to conserve their working capacities. 
Work itself is of the essence of Hfe; without it, man's physi- 
cal as well as his moral nature decays. Regular continuous 
labor and exertion is as necessary for the worker's health 
as it is for subsistence, and if legislation regulating the 
workday had sought to invade legitimate work, it would 
long ago have defeated its own end. What it does seek is to 
check and control overwork, to conserve the workers from 
labor which leaves them spent and worn at thirty-five and 
forty years, when they should be in their prime. 

In most European countries, and in some of our states, 
legislation has usually been preceded by parliamentary com- 
missions and investigations. The testimony of physicians 
who have practiced among factory populations, and factory 
inspectors who have been in daily contact with the workers, 
furnishes an impressive array of opinions and evidence on the 
practical effects of the long working day. 

Thus, for example, when in the first days of factory leg- 
islation, almost a century ago, Sadler's Committee sat and 
learned what the working children of England were suffering, 
the most impressive testimony was that of the physicians. 
Many medical men in turn testified to the hideous overwork 
menacing the health of England. By 1844 Lord Shaftes- 
bury could maintain in Parliament that, since 1816, 80 sur- 
'geons and physicians and three medical commissioners speak- 
ing for the medical men of Lancashire, had asserted "the 
prodigious evil of the system." * Buried in musty volumes 
on remote library shelves, describing cruelties to children now 
happily long past, these terrible pages of testimony strike 
at the outset the keynote of factory legislation : the benefit 
to health and output, to physical and economic life. 

Just seventy-five years later, in another continent, 
another memorable group of physicians presented what is, 
perhaps, the most impressive medical testimony of the last 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, March 15, 1844. 

6 



INTRODUCTORY 

quarter century on the subject of overwork. This was in the 
controversy between the Bell Telephone Company of To- 
ronto, Canada, and their girl employes, concerning a species 
of industrial strain unknown to the early nineteenth century, 
typical of almost incredible changes wrought in less than 
three generations. Twenty-six prominent Toronto physi- 
cians and neurologists described the injuries accruing to 
young women in the exhausting telephone service, and laid 
down what seemed to them minimum requirements for health 
and efficiency.* 

The testimony of physicians, of which these are the 
earliest and latest examples, and the long files of factory 
inspectors' reports, repeat in country after country, in his- 
torical sequence, similar experiences: the same enthusiasm 
for industrial expansion with indiscriminate employment of 
old and young; the same exploitation, the same suffering, 
and the same need of protection. Conditions and industrial 
processes differ, different trades are described, different people 
discussed, but, unknown to one another, and terrible in their 
unconscious unanimity, these observers ring the changes upon 
the common human facts at issue — exhaustion and deteri- 
oration following in the wake of the long working day and 
working night. Workers of many nations pass before one 
as one reads; men, women, and young children drawn into 
the industrial whirlpool, as the wave of invention and de- 
velopment strikes their respective countries, — and protec- 
tion follows slowly after. 

Thus, England stood first in industry at the close of the 
eighteenth century. By the time one generation had grown 
up under the new regime, the evils of exploitation called ir- 
resistibly for some check, and the first general act in protec- 
tion of working children — feeble precursor of a long sequence 
— was passed in 1833. France, the next to enter the in- 
dustrial race, began to legislate for the workers in the late 

* Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of 
Employment, between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., and 
Operators at Toronto, Ontario. Ottawa, 1907. 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

forties, Switzerland following in the seventies, Austria, Hol- 
land, and Germany in the next two decades, Italy at the 
close of the century. Similarly in our own country, Massa- 
chusetts and, the other New England states where the first 
cotton mills were operated, were the first to find that legis- 
lative protection must shield the workers to conserve them. 

First the new industry, then exploitation, then the de- 
mand for some measure of protection — such is the universal 
story. Nor is this a chance sequence. It is the relentless 
record of history, the more impressive for its unconscious 
testimony to a waste of human effort and experience, in 
retrospect scarcely credible among a thinking people, yet in 
our very midst persisting steadily to this day. 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

STRIKING as is the unanimity of the world's indus- 
trial experience and the testimony of observers in each 
country as to the need of more complete protection for 
the workers, such empirical data furnish, after all, no scien- 
tific basis for labor legislation. They are arguments, legiti- 
mate presumptions in its favor, not scientific proof. 

Yet a scientific ground for such legislation does exist 
and is available today. The fundamental basis for laws 
regulating the working hours of men, women, or children in 
industrial occupations — at the spindle or loom, in machine 
shops or laundries, behind the counter or in the glass-houses 
— is the common physiological phenomenon, fatigue, the 
normal result of all human action. For fatigue is nature's 
warning signal that the limit of activity is approaching. Ex- 
haustion, or overfatigue, follows when the warning is dis- 
regarded and the organism is pushed beyond its limits by 
further forced exertions. 

In this inexorable sequence, subject to countless varia- 
tions but never failing, we have a broad fundamental basis 
for the short working day in industry: a physiological neces- 
sity inherent in man's structure for allowing an adequate 
margin of rest. The regulation of working hours is the neces- 
sary mechanism to prevent overfatigue or exhaustion, fore- 
runner of countless miseries to individuals and whole nations. 

It is precisely in explaining the normal and abnormal 
aspects of fatigue, its nature, effects, and relation to all human 
life, that science can give its authoritative sanction to labor 
legislation. For, during the last century, unknown to those 
who saw the practical results of overwork in industry and 

9 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

sought a legal remedy year after year, so often in vain, men 
of various sciences were studying the same phenomena in the 
laboratory. The physiologist, chemist, bacteriologist, and 
psychologist have contributed to the study. The scientific 
investigations of fatigue in its varied aspects make up a wide 
and growing literature. In spite of still unverified details, 
the underlying principles and laws have been agreed upon. 

The study of fatigue, as applied to industry, is not an 
academic nor a remote speculation. It shows why the system 
of long hours must, physiologically, result in human deteriora- 
tion and inferior output. It should help, also, to determine 
what protection is needed in the future for workers under 
modern conditions of labor, viewing the new conditions and 
their demand on human energies from the physiological 
standpoint. 

Such a change of front, indeed, from the purely economic 
to the broadly physiological, is what this study chiefly advo- 
cates. Heretofore, the scientifically wellknown principles 
of fatigue have not been utilized in the protection of the 
workers, just because they have been unknown to those 
persons who could have benefited most directly: the legis- 
lators who frame the laws, the enlightened employers who 
need legislation to restrain unscrupulous competitors, the 
trade unions and philanthropic agencies which have pro- 
moted legislation, and the judges whose official sanction of 
the laws must precede enforcement. To all these, in the 
main, the contributions of science on the subject have been 
unknown. To the scientist, on the other hand, the industrial 
world has been an undiscovered country. Even physicians 
and students of hygiene are to a large extent unacquainted 
with the vast speed and complexity of processes to which 
industrial workers are subjected. They hardly know, for 
instance, how machinery is additionally speeded each year; 
how, to cite a single example from the needle trades, the 
newest power sewing machines run by girl operators carry 
12 needles instead of one, or set almost 4000 stitches a minute, 
each thread and needle to be intently watched for breaking as 

10 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 



the material is guided on its rapid passage. Changes of 
which this is typical have added to the strain of industry in a 
progressive ratio, and, obviously, add also to all the elements 
which make up the worker's fatigue. 



1. ONE FACTOR IN FATIGUE: ACCUMULATION OF WASTE 

PRODUCTS 

A brief account of the scientific views of fatigue must be 
given, before considering their practical application to the 
problem of overstrain in industry. We must familiarize 
ourselves with enough of the technical vocabulary and history 
to understand the scientific conception of fatigue in general, 
and that of industrial workers in particular. 

Physiology teaches that life is a continual change of 
structure. The structural basis of all tissue, muscular, 
nervous, connective, etc., is the cell. The life of the tissue 
consists in chemical combination of the protoplasm or sub- 
stance of the tissue cells with the nutritive materials derived 
from food stuffs and the oxygen of the air. The distinctive 
property of the cell — that indeed which makes it living — is 
its power of taking to itself and converting to its own sub- 
stance materials that are not living. This is a double process ; 
for, just as the potential stuff is seized and wrought into 
live tissue, so the outworn, dead matter which is no longer 
of use is cast off and ultimately expelled from the body. 

This never-ending, never-ceasing business of life was 
depicted by Sir Michael Foster, the foremost British physi- 
ologist, with all the delicacy of fancy.* 

''Did we possess some optic aid," he writes, "which 
should overcome the grossness of our vision, so that we 
might watch the dance of atoms in this double process of 
making and unmaking in the living body, we should see the 
commonplace lifeless things which are brought by the blood, 
and which we call the food, caught up into and made part of 

* Foster, Sir Michael: Weariness. (Being the Rede Lecture delivered y^ 
before the members of the University of Cambridge, June 14, 1893.) The i 
Nineteenth Century, Vol. 34, No. 199, p. 339. (Sept., 1893.) / 

II 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the molecular whorls of the living muscle, linked together for 
a while in the intricate figures of the dance of life, giving and 
taking energy as they dance; and then we should see how, 
loosing hands, they slipped back into the blood as dead, inert, 
used-up matter. In every tiny block of muscle there is a 
part which is really alive, there are parts which are becoming 
alive, there are parts which have been alive but are now 
dying or dead; there is an upward rush from the lifeless to 
the living, a downward rush from the living to the dead. 
This is always going on, whether the muscle be quiet and at 
rest, or whether it be active and moving. Some of the 
capital of living material is always being spent, changed into 
dead waste, some of the new food is always being raised into 
living capital.'' 

Two processes of cellular life are thus continually carried 
on in the living body: assimilation, or building up, known as 
anabolism; disassimilation, or breaking down material into 
simpler chemical forms (ultimately expelled as waste prod- 
ucts), known as catabolism. Upon these two processes 
together, or metabolism, life itself depends, and to this 
fundamental basis of life we must turn for an explanation of 
what fatigue is. 

The blood is the medium through which nutritive ma- 
terials are carried to the tissues, and through which also 
the chemical products of tissue destruction are carried off. 
These chemical wastes are poisonous impurities, created by 
the vital activities of the organism, and it is precisely to their 
accumulation in the blood that fatigue is largely due. 

In Sir Michael Foster's words:* 

"As the breath of man is poison to his fellow men, so the 
outcome of the life of each part of the body, each tissue, be it 
muscle, brain, or what not, is a poison to that part and its 
fellows, and may be a poison to yet other parts. Of each 
member, while it may be said that the blood is the life thereof, 
it may with equal truth be said, the blood is the death thereof; 
the blood is the channel for food, but it is also a pathway for 
poison." 

♦ Op. cit., p. 350. 

12 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

During activity, as will be shown later, the products of 
chemical change increase. A tired person is literally and 
actually a poisoned person — poisoned by his own waste 
products. But so marvelously is the body constructed that, 
like a running stream, it purifies itself, and during repose 
these toxic impurities are normally burned up by the oxygen 
brought by the blood, excreted by the kidneys, destroyed 
in the liver, or eliminated from the body through the lungs. 
So rest repairs fatigue. 

This balance is kept true and fatigue is repaired just as 
long as it remains within physiological limits; that is, as 
long as activity is balanced by repose, when the noxious 
products of activity are more quickly eliminated and tissue 
is rebuilt. Just as soon as the metabolic equilibrium is de- 
stroyed the organism becomes clogged by its own poisons, 
exhaustion results, and health is impaired. The physiological 
normal phenomenon of fatigue becomes pathological, or ab- 
normal exhaustion. 

Health, even life itself, hangs upon the metabolic bal- 
ance. In extreme instances of overexertion, as when hunted 
animals drop dead in the chase, they die, not from overstrain 
of any particular organ, such as the heart, but from sheer 
chemical poisoning due to the unexpelled toxins of fatigue. 

"The poisons are more and more heaped up, poisoning 
the muscles, poisoning the brain, poisoning the heart, poison- 
ing at last the blood itself, starting in the intricate machinery 
of the body new poisons in addition to themselves. The 
hunted hare, run to death, dies not because he is choked for 
want of breath, not because his heart stands still, its store of 
energy having given out, but because a poisoned blood poisons 
his brain, poisons his whole body."* 

In animals which have so died of exhaustion, the blood 
is found loaded with the products of chemical action. Ab- 
normally rapid putrefaction and rigidity of the muscles fol- 
lows after death. In man, the occurrence of actual death 

* Foster, op. cit., p. 351. 
13 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

from overexertion is rare. A historic instance often quoted 
is the case of Eukles, the immortal runner from Marathon, 
who fell dead as he announced to Athens victory over the 
Persians. An Italian pathologist, Professor Pieraccini of 
Florence, quotes two interesting modern examples in Algeria.* 
Two native runners fell dead on arrival, one after covering 
192 kilometers in 45 hours, the other 252 kilometers in 62 
hours. Abnormally rapid rigidity and putrefaction of the 
bodies followed, and after an autopsy death was ascribed to 
the "excess of fatigue.'' 

Such then are the extremest results of the self-generated 
poisons of fatigue. Physiological processes turn pathological ; 
the normal instruments of life become agents of death. 
Obviously, on this side of death, there is a wide range of 
injuries which metabolic products can inflict upon the human 
frame. But before addressing ourselves to such specific ills 
we must examine more closely the proofs that fatigue results 
from the chemical wastes of activity. We must acquaint 
ourselves with the complex processes by which fatigue ex- 
hausts and rest repairs the muscular and nervous functions. 
And since this study of fatigue which we are to review, has 
scarcely yet concerned itself with the appearance of fatigue 
in industrial workers, we must turn our attention tempo- 
rarily from labor and industry to the apparatus of the labor- 
atory and to animal experimentation. 



2. THE MEASUREMENT OF MUSCULAR FATIGUE 

(a) In Animals 
More than forty-five years ago, in 1865, the German 
physiologist Ranke first investigated the depressant action 
of certain products of protoplasmic activity upon muscular 
contraction.! He demonstrated that if an extract of fatigued 
frog muscle was injected into a second frog, the muscles of 

* Pieraccini, G.: Patologia del Lavoro, p. 18. Milan, 1906. 
t Ranke, J.: Tetanus. Englemann, Leipzig, 1865; Centralblatt fur 
die medicinischen Wissenschaften, 1868, Vol. IV, p. 769. 

14 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

the second animal showed evidences of fatigue. Their 
power of contraction on stimulation was diminished. A 
similar experiment with an extract made from resting muscle 
had no such effect. 

About twenty-five years later, the Italian scientist Mosso 
showed that the depressant action of fatigue substances is 
not confined to the tissues in which they arise.* He dem- 
onstrated that the blood becomes charged with these chem- 
ical wastes produced in the muscles, and carries them to all 
parts of the body. He proved this by injecting the blood of 
a dog fatigued by long continued running into the vessels of 
a second dog from which an equivalent amount of blood had 
been drawn. Upon this, the second dog showed the usual 
signs of fatigue. 

Products of muscular activity are thus shown to cause 
symptoms of fatigue when injected into resting tissue. In 
the study of muscular fatigue we may learn how these waste 
products are created and how they affect the organism. 
Muscular fatigue has been longest studied since fatigue of 
the muscles can be most easily observed and registered by 
certain instruments of precision or measurement. The 
observation of fatigue or diminished power of reaction in frog 
muscles preceded Mosso's famous studies of human fatigue. 

The myograph, designed by H. von Helmholz, shows 
how the loss of energy in wearied frog muscles results from 
noxious substances in the muscles, produced during work. 
The leg muscle of a frog is separated from the rest of the body 
and hung by one end upon a support. To the other end of 
the muscle a lever is attached which comes in contact with a 
revolving cylinder covered with sooty paper. If the leg is 
at rest, a straight line is traced upon the revolving cylinder. 
If the muscle is electrically stimulated to contract, the lever 
records the contractions by upward and downward marks 
upon the sooty surface of the revolving cylinder, the height 
of the curves being determined by the force of the contrac- 

* Mosso, Angelo: Arch, fiir Anatomic u. Physiologic. Physiologische 
Abthcilung, 1890, p. 89. 

15 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 




Fig. 1 
Series of 550 contractions of a frog's gastrocnemius muscle, excised 
and stimulated at intervals of two seconds. Every contraction is recorded, 
except at the places indicated by the black bands, at each of which the rec- 
ords of fourteen contractions are omitted. The record of the first contrac- 
tion is at the bottom of the figure: that of the last one at the top. Fatigue 
is shown in the progressive decrease in height and the increase in length of 
the curves. 



tion. As the muscle tires, the contractions grow smaller and 
smaller until finally the lever cannot be raised at all.* 

It can be shown that this fatigue of the muscles is due 
to the paralyzing action of the accumulated fatigue products 

* See Figures 1, 2, and 3. The illustrations are from The Nature of 
Fatigue, by Professor Frederic S. Lee. Popular Science Monthly, Feb., 
1910. (Reproduced by permission.) 

i6 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 




Fig. 2 
Series of contractions of a rat's gastrocnemius muscle, excised and 
stimulated at intervals of two and one-half seconds. Fatigue is shown in 
the progressive decrease in height of the curves. 



in the blood. For if at any time after fatigue has set in, the 
muscle, while suspended, is washed out through its blood- 
vessels with a normal salt solution, its power to contract 
returns. As soon as the fatigue products are washed away, 
the muscle is rested.* 



* See Figure 4. 
17 



\ 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 




Fig. 3 
Series of contractions of the frog's gastrocnemius muscle, excised and 
stimulated at intervals of two seconds. Every fiftieth contraction is re- 
corded. Fatigue is shown in the progressive lengthening of the descend- 
ing limb of the curves. 




Fig. 4 
Series of contractions of a frog's gastrocnemius muscle in situ and 
stimulated at intervals of two seconds. The flow of blood through the muscle 
was stopped by ligating the artery, and the record of fatigue was made. At 
the break in the series, the muscle rested five minutes, during which time the 
ligature was removed and the blood was allowed to circulate through the 
muscle. The record of contractions at the right of the break was made 
immediately after the resting period, and while the blood was still circulating. 



(b) In Man 
Using the same principle described above, Mosso devised 
an apparatus called the ergograph, to study muscular con- 
traction in man. 

18 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

" By its means/' writes Professor Frederic S. Lee, him- 
self one of the foremost American investigators in this field, 
" (Mosso) began the long series of studies of voluntary contrac- 
tions in man, which has made the Turin School famous and 
has immeasurably extended our knowledge of fatigue in living 
human beings/'* 

The ergograph is an instrument constructed so as to 
record the contractions of a single muscle or group of muscles. 
Thus, for instance, the arm and hand, except the middle fmger, 
may be supported and held fast. The person experimented 
upon contracts his middle fmger at regular intervals, thereby 
lifting a known weight to a definite height or stretching a 
spring of known tension. As in the myograph, contractions 
are recorded by curves upon a revolving cylinder, and show 
a steady diminution of the lifting power of the muscles, the 
rate and regularity of the diminution differing with individ- 
uals. If the highest points of the curves recorded on the 
cylinder are joined together, the result is a curve of charac- 
teristic form for each individual, known as the curve of 
fatigue. This curve remains practically the same for each 
person whether his contractions are voluntary or due to elec- 
tric stimulation. Some persons obviously tire less quickly 
than others; some work at high pressure for a short time, 
giving out suddenly, while others work more slowly and regu- 
larly. All this is borne out by the record of the ergograph, 
which shows graphically on paper how great are the varieties 
of individual working capacities. (See Figure 5.) 

In industrial occupations, obviously, the working time 
cannot be measured off for each individual according to his 
special capacity. But the testimony of the ergograph to 
the infinite varieties of endowment in strength and staying 
capacity emphasizes the need of setting a fair maximum 
working period which shall not over-reach the natural limits 
of the majority of individual workers. 

By the use of the ergograph we learn more of the funda- 

* Lee, Frederic S., Ph. D. (Professor of Physiology, Columbia Uni- 
versity, New York): Fatigue. .Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 172. Phila- 
delphia and London, Lippincott, 1906. 

19 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

mental factors in fatigue. It is shown that if sufficient rests 
are allowed between contractions, no fatigue results. With a 
load of six kilograms, for instance, the flexor muscle of the 
finger showed no fatigue when a rest of ten seconds was given 
between contractions. But after complete fatigue, once the 




Fig. 5 

Series of contractions of the flexor muscles of a human finger. The 
muscle was stimulated electrically every two seconds, and the resulting 
contractions were therefore involuntary. Record 1 was made when the 
muscle was fresh; record 2 immediately after three and one-half hours had 
been spent in the oral examination of students; record 3 two hours after 
the completion of the examination. (From Mosso's " Fatigue.") 

muscles are exhausted, the utmost expenditure of will power 
does not enable them to contract further. A very long inter- 
val — two hours — is needed for the muscle to make a complete 
recovery. 



3. ANOTHER FACTOR IN FATIGUE: CONSUMPTION OF 
ENERGY-YIELDING SUBSTANCE 

So long an interval of rest would evidently not be 
necessary for the removal of the poisonous metabolic prod- 
ucts, if fatigue were due to the depressant action of these 

20 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

products alone. The ergographic record, therefore, throws 
light upon another fundamental factor in fatigue besides the 
accumulation of fatigue products: the actual consumption 
of the material from which energy for contraction is obtained. 
At the termination of hard muscular work the muscle con- 
tains a lessened supply of energy-yielding material, because 
during contraction the processes of disassimilation or catab- 
olism are in excess of those of assimilation or anabolism. 
This fundamental change in the muscle substance can be 
made plainer by a brief consideration of the chemical proc- 
esses in contraction. 

(a) The Chemistry of Muscular Contraction: How Glycogen 
IS Supplied and Consumed 

Every voluntary muscular contraction is due to the 
stimulus received from the central nervous system through 
the nerves. Of the nature of this stimulus little is known, 
and the nerve elements in activity and fatigue will be con- 
sidered later. We know that each muscular act has as its 
basis chemical processes. It is a form of combustion, as we 
readily recognize by the greater heat generated within us by 
any muscular effort. For combustion there must be union 
of some substance with oxygen. The union may be slow, as 
when iron rusts or is slowly oxidized, or fast, as when wood 
or coal burns with a flame. In muscular combustion the 
oxygen is supplied by the blood, the substance with which it 
combines being the so-called animal starch of the muscles, 
called glycogen. 

Let us, then, first consider how the organism is supplied 
with these two essential factors for muscular action, glycogen 
and oxygen. 

Glycogen is one of the stored materials of the muscle, 
a compound of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen; and muscular 
tissue has the power of forming this glycogen from the sugar 
or dextrose brought to it by the blood. Dextrose is the form 
of sugar in which our carbohydrate foods (starches, sugars, 
etc., the bulk of our usual diet) are eventually absorbed into 

21 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the blood and carried by the blood to the muscular tissues, 
there to be transformed into glycogen. The stored glycogen 
of the muscles keeps uniting chemically with the oxygen of the 
blood. The glycogen is broken down into a simpler chemical 
form, giving off the gas carbon dioxide and other acid wastes, 
and releasing heat and mechanical energy in the process. 

With the released energy, contraction of the muscle 
takes place and hence ultimately the industrial labor which 
is our special theme. The heat contributes to our body 
temperature. The chemical wastes, as we have seen, poison 
the whole organism unless prevented from accumulating 
unduly, and go to constitute what we know as fatigue. 

But, as we saw above in considering the ergograph, 
there is another fundamental factor in fatigue which must be 
taken into account here: a consumption of energy-yielding 
material of the muscle itself. This takes place in the follow- 
ing manner: 

Glycogen is, as it were, stored for use. It is always 
being replenished, always being depleted. The metabolic 
wastes, produced when glycogen is broken down into simpler 
chemical form, are constantly thrown off; the potential stuff 
brought by the blood is constantly being seized and built up 
again into living tissue. But when the muscle is active and 
contracts energetically, there is a run upon our glycogen. It 
is used up faster than it is built in muscle. The glycogen is 
spent so rapidly that there is not time for the bloodstream to 
bring back to the tissue the potential material for its repair. 
Glycogen may even be entirely consumed and disappear from 
the muscle. 

But there is another organ of the body which acts further 
as a storehouse for glycogen. This is the liver, whose cells 
are so constructed that they too convert the dextrose or sugar 
in the blood into glycogen and retain it, until the store in the 
muscles is so far depleted that it must be replenished. If it 
were not for the stored glycogen of the liver which is sup- 
plied to the muscles at their need, starvation would more 
quickly end in death. 

22 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

Even this provision of stored glycogen, however, does 
not suifice after prolonged and severe work to supply oxi- 
dizable material for muscular activity. After excessive labor 
the entire store of glycogen in the liver as well as in the 
muscle may be practically used up. Thus we have reached 
the other fundamental factor in fatigue, — the consumption 
of the energy-yielding substance itself. Not only does tissue 
manufacture poison for itself in its very act of living, casting 
off chemical wastes into the circling bloodstream; not only 
are these wastes poured into the blood faster with increased 
exertion, clogging the muscle more and more with its own 
noxious products ; but finally, there is a depletion of the very 
material from which energy is obtained. The catabolic proc- 
ess is in excess of the anabolic. In exhaustion, the organ- 
ism is forced literally to "use itself up.'' 

We shall see later how destructive to health this phenom- 
enon of exhaustion is, to which nervous as well as muscular 
tissue is subject; how long it takes to make good such losses; 
how exhaustion, indeed, taps the very source of our energies. 

(b) How Oxygen is Supplied for Muscular Contraction 
Hitherto in this discussion we have referred constantly 
to the chemical reaction between glycogen and oxygen, and 
the results obtained when glycogen is thus broken down by 
oxygen. It remains now to trace how at every breath we 
draw, oxygen is supplied for our internal combustion of 
glycogen; how at every exhalation we breathe out the gas 
carbon dioxide — product of muscular action. The pathway 
for these gases is the blood. 

When oxygen is breathed into the air sacs of the lungs, 
it comes into contact with the smallest blood vessels of the 
body, the capillaries. The blood in these thin-walled capil- 
laries is separated from the oxygen in the air sacs only by 
moist and permeable membranes. By diffusion, the oxygen 
passes through these moist membranes and combines chem- 
ically with the haemoglobin or red coloring matter of the red 
corpuscles in the capillaries. These tiny blood vessels, now 

23 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

oxygen bearers, penetrate in a fine network to every tissue 
and organ in the body. As soon as the blood reaches the 
muscles, the loose chemical union of the haemoglobin and 
oxygen is again broken down, the oxygen combining with 
the glycogen of the muscle tissue, setting free energy, as we 
have seen, and evolving waste products. For, as the oxygen 
streams out to combine with the glycogen, there streams back 
in the opposite direction the gas carbon dioxide, thrown off 
in the chemical process. 

"There is an upward rush from the lifeless to the 
living; a downward rush from the living to the dead.'' 

The lifeless carbon dioxide in its turn combines with the 
blood, which has given its oxygen to the tissue; and in the 
intricate flow of our vascular system, carbon dioxide is carried 
back by the blood to the lungs and thence expired. We may 
get some notion of the combustion or chemical process carried 
on within our muscles by the fact that at every breath air 
loses about 5 per cent of its oxygen and increases in carbon 

dioxide a hundred fold.* 

O N CO2 

Inspired air contains 20.96 79.00 0.04 

Expired air contains 16.40 79.19 4.41 

Loss 4.56 .19 4.37 Gain 

Moreover, it has been proved that after heavy muscular 
work, an animal gives off even larger proportions of carbon 
dioxide in its expired air. The physiologists Voit and Petten- 
kofer showed as early as 1866, that during a day in which 
much muscular work was done, a man expired almost twice 
as much carbon dioxide as during a resting day. During 
activity the internal combustion is more active, glycogen is 
being broken down more rapidly, more wastes are being 
thrown into the blood, more carbon dioxide is evolved. The 
wastes indeed accumulate more rapidly than they can be 
carried off, and hence, as we have seen, after excessive exer- 

* Notter, J. Lane, and Firth, R. H.: The Theory and Practice of 
Hygiene, p. 151. Third Edition. London, J. V. A. Churchill, 1908. 

24 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

tion, the metabolic equilibrium is destroyed. But during 
rest at night the processes of repair are again in the ascen- 
dant. If sufficient rest is not allowed between working days, 
obviously a physiological deficit must result. 

This is the essential injury of consecutive days, weeks, 
and months of overtime work, which we shall find common 
to many branches of industry, — that the normal season of 
tissue repair, between working days, is cut down at the very 
time when the severest demands are being made upon the 
human organism. 

4. THE NATURE OF THE FATIGUE PRODUCTS 

The production of carbon dioxide has been called the 
most significant change in the muscle during contraction. 
The nature of other toxic products of muscular action is 
shown by laboratory examination. Fatigued muscle is 
shown by litmus paper to be acid in reaction. A wellknown 
experiment illustrates the acidity of fatigued muscle by the 
use of acid fuchsin. This stain is injected under the skin of a 
frog. It is absorbed and distributed in the body without 
injuring the tissues. As long as the body remains at rest, 
the solution is colorless; but if one of the legs is electrically 
stimulated the muscles take on a red color, showing that an 
acid is produced locally. 

"It is now customary,'' writes Professor Lee, "to recog- 
nize three distinct metabolic products as fatiguing, namely — 
sarcolactic acid, monopotassium phosphate and carbon di- 
oxide, all of which are acid in reaction.''* 

Within the last few years the German scientist, W. 
Weichardt, has published special studies of chemical fatigue 

*0p. cit., Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 183. See also by the same 
author: Cause of theTreppe. Amer. Jour, of Physiology, Vol. XVHI, No. 
Ill, p. 267 (April 1, 1907). The Action of Normal Fatigue Substances on 
Muscle. Ibid., Vol. XX, No. I, p. 170 (Oct. 1, 1907). Pseudo-Fatigue of 
the Spinal Cord. Ibid., Vol. XXIV, No. IV, p. 384 (July 1, 1909). Physical 
Exercise from the Standpoint of Physiology. Science, N. S., Vol. XXIX, 
No. 744, p. 521 (Apr. 2, 1909). The Nature of Fatigue. Popular Scienct 
Monthly, Feb., 1910, p. 182. 

23 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

substances. In 1904 Weichardt claimed to have isolated 
from fatigued muscles a specific toxin of fatigue, entirely 
analogous to other bacterial toxins, such as that of diphtheria 
or tetanus.* He asserts that if this toxin obtained from the 
extract of fatigued muscles is injected into animals, it pro- 
duces all the symptoms of fatigue. When given in large 
doses it is said even to cause death. In human beings the 
production of fatigue toxin is supposed to take place with 
ordinary physiological fatigue. 

Weichardt even lays claim to having obtained a true 
anti-toxin of fatigue. He asserts that when small doses of 
the toxin are administered to animals, a specific anti-toxin is 
produced in the blood, under the influence of which the mus- 
cles of the animals experimented upon display far less fatigue 
than under ordinary conditions. Their endurance capacity 
is said to be largely increased by injection of the anti-toxin. 
When corresponding amounts of the anti-toxin were given 
with doses of toxin, the paralyzing effects of the latter were 
said to be counteracted. 

These later theories and experiments, verging on the 
fantastic, have not been cordially accepted by the scientific 
world. In the eight years which have elapsed since Weich- 
ardt's discovery was announced, it has been confirmed by 
no other eminent investigator. At present, his theories of 
fatigue toxin and anti-toxin must still be regarded as uncor- 
roborated. 

Moreover, even if further scientific investigation should 
sustain Weichardt's assertions, they would be of theoretic not 
practical interest and value. The injection of an anti-toxin 
of fatigue might possibly be resorted to in athletic endurance 
tests and tours de force, such as six-day bicycle races. Ob- 

* Weichardt, W.: Uber Ermiidungstoxine und deren Antitoxine. 
Miinchenermedizinische Wochenschrift, 1904, 51. Jahrgang, No. 1, pp. 12-13. 

Ibid., 1904. No. 48. pp. 2121-2126. 

Ibid., 1905. No. 26. pp. 1234-1236. 

Ibid., 1906. No. 1, pp. 7-10. 

Ibid, 1906. No. 35. pp. 1701-1702. 

Vierteljahresschrift fiir offentliche Gesundheitspflege. XXIX. 1907. 
Ermudungs u Ubermiidungsmassmethoden. 

26 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

viously no such artificial stimulus could be of any concern 
in the daily regimen of industry with which we are concerned. 
A glimpse at theories of fatigue toxin and anti-toxin is 
of interest to us chiefly as additional evidence of the gravity 
and the scientific nature of our problem. Overstrain in 
industry is obviously no invention of sentiment or fiction 
when the chemical nature of fatigue and its complex relations 
with life are realized. The more we learn of the scientific 
nature of fatigue, the more it invites us to utilize such knowl- 
edge for the improvement of working conditions. 



5. THE NATURE OF NERVOUS FATIGUE 

Thus far we have confined ourselves to a consideration 
of the main underlying causes of fatigue in the breakdown of 
normal metabolism, and we have glanced at the manifesta- 
tions of muscular fatigue. We must proceed now to other 
forms of fatigue, nervous and psychic. 

Such is the oneness of life, the controlling unity of the 
living body, that we cannot practically estimate any one 
form of fatigue separately; we cannot set definite limits 
where nervous fatigue ends and muscular fatigue begins, or 
vice versa. They are inevitably bound up together, since 
every voluntary muscular act is due to the stimulus received 
through the nerves from the central nervous system. Of the 
nature of the nerve impulse or of the energy generated in the 
centers, little is agreed upon, excepting that some form of 
electric activity is involved. 

But though the origin of nerve impulses be still unknown, 
shrouded in the mystery of life itself, it is undoubted that 
our levels of nervous endurance and resistance may be per- 
manently lowered by excessive pressure upon them. Further, 
we know that nervous energy is not only the stimulus of 
muscular action, but the controller of all our functions; the 
"very pulse of the machine." Hence nervous fatigue and 
exhaustion is the most destructive because the most inclusive 
form of fatigue. 

27 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

We have seen that toxic products are thrown off by the 
muscles and are carried in the blood. When fatigued blood 
becomes laden with these substances they affect other muscles 
through which the blood circulates. Thus, after an exhaust- 
ing walk, as Mosso explains, the muscles of the arms as well 
as of the legs are indisposed to further great exertion. Mag- 
giora, a student and follower of Mosso, demonstrated this 
fact with the ergograph. He says: 

"After a fatiguing day's march, certain soldiers' hand 
tracings showed a notable diminution of energy even after 
the night's rest, being very low at 7 a.m., less so at 9 and 11 
o'clock, but rising to normal energy only by 3 p. m."* 

Now, just as the metabolic poisons created in one set of 
muscles are carried by the blood, and act upon other muscles, 
so they act also upon our nervous system — upon nerve end- 
ings in muscle and upon central nerve cells. Further, it is 
agreed that there is a metabolism of the nervous tissue itself 
similar to that of muscle tissue, a similar building up and 
breaking down of energy-yielding material. Hence fatigue 
of the nervous system is ascribed to the same double origin 
as muscle fatigue: accumulation of toxic waste products, 
and consumption of substances essential for activity.f 

(a) The Nervous System, Central and Peripheral 
The nervous system is composed of the central nervous 
system, — the brain and spinal cord ; and the peripheral system, 
— nerve ganglia and nerve fibers arising from the centers. 
When a number of nerve fibers are bound together in a 
bundle or trunk, we have the plainly visible whitish nerves. 
These are distributed to all parts of the body. Every organ 
and tissue has its own supply of nerves connecting it with the 
brain or spinal cord. 

* Archiv fiir Anatomic u. Physiologic, 1890, p. 191. Physiologische 
Abthcilung. Maggiora, Dr. Arnaldo: Uber die Gesetze der Ermiidung. 

t Howell, Wm. H.: Textbook of Physiology, p. 110. Philadelphia and 
London, W. B. Saunders Co., 1908. 

28 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

Nerve fibers are divided into two great groups: the 
efferent fibers, which carry impulses out from the nervous 
system to the peripheral tissues (skin, muscles, etc.), and 
the afferent fibers, which carry impulses inward from the 
peripheral tissues to the nerve centers. 

Some of the efferent fibers, carrying impulses outward 
from the centers, are also called motor nerve fibers. If these 
fibers end in muscles, the effect of their impulses is to produce 
muscular contraction. If they end in glands, they cause a 
secretion, depending on the kind of tissue with which the 
nerve fiber is connected. Some afferent fibers, bearing im- 
pulses inward to the nerve centers, are also called sensory 
fibers, because in many instances these impulses reach the 
brain and give rise to sensations of various kinds. Often^ 
however, these inward carried impulses do not reach the 
brain in consciousness, but are manifested as reflex actions, 
such as the movements of the heart, intestines, etc. These 
reflex activities constitute a fundamental part of our nervous 
system, but we may for the time being leave them out of 
account. 

(b) The Location of Nervous Fatigue 
The question at once arises how our intricate nervous 
system succumbs to fatigue and how such fatigue is mani- 
fested. It obviously cannot easily be measured and regis- 
tered, like muscular fatigue, upon a revolving drum. Labor- 
atory study of nervous fatigue has been beset with enormous 
difficulties and the unsolved problems are many. There is 
profound disagreement among scientists as to what part of 
the nervous system first succumbs after excessive exertions. 
We know that the nerve fibers themselves — carriers 
of energy — are apparently not readily subject to fatigue. 
That is, they can conduct impulses to the peripheral tissues 
almost indefinitely. Varied experiments have proved that 
their normal functional activity may be carried on to an al- 
most indefinite extent without causing fatigue. In these 
experiments the underlying idea has been to stimulate the 

29 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

nerve continuously, but to interpose a block somewhere 
along the course of the nerve, so that the impulses shall not 
be conducted to the muscle experimented upon. This is 
obviously necessary because otherwise the muscle would be- 
come fatigued, and there would be no way to distinguish 
between fatigue of the muscle or of the nerve fiber. By the 
use of curare, a South American arrow poison, the passage 
of the electric stimulus to the muscle is blocked, the poison 
affecting the terminations of the nerves, or motor end-plates, 
as they are called, and preventing their transmission of 
impulses to the muscles. By the use of curare, then, the 
sciatic nerve has been continuously stimulated for as long as 
ten hours.* When the effects of curare were removed (which 
can be accomplished within a few minutes) the nerve was 
found to be still conducting, the muscle responding. Thus, 
nerve fibers are practically unfatiguable. 

It has long been supposed that while nerve fiber is proved 
highly resistant, the central portion of the nervous system is 
extremely susceptible to fatigue. It has been thought that 
after prolonged muscular activity the brain and spinal cord 
tire first, before the muscle. Thus, after a finger muscle has 
become so fatigued by the ergograph that it can no longer 
voluntarily lift a given weight, it can be made to do so by 
electric stimulation. The muscular mechanism is apparently 
still in working order, at least for a space of time. After a 
longer or shorter period, even the given electric stimulus 
cannot cause the muscle to contract, and the individual's 
curve of fatigue drops after electric stimulation in very much 
the same way that it does in voluntary contraction. Ap- 
parently the muscle has not entirely lost its power of contrac- 
tion when it can no longer voluntarily contract. Accord- 
ing to this theory, what seems to be muscular fatigue is in 
reality nervous fatigue, fatigue of some part of our nervous 
system. 

Laboratory experiments upon animals show that after 
prolonged activity demonstrable histologic changes take 

* Howell, Wm. H., op. cit., p. 111. 
30 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

place in the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord.* Mosso 
drew attention to the marked modifications in the brains of 
exhausted birds. He gives a delightful account of his ex- 
perimental dove cote and of his fatigue tests upon military 
carrier pigeons provided by the Italian Ministry of War. 
He studied also the changes and characteristics in wearied 
migrating birds, such as the quail which arrive each year in 
great numbers from Africa upon Italian shores. Exhausted 
by their journey, hundreds are killed, dashing themselves 
in plain daylight against walls and houses. Either they 
are too much exhausted to see these bright objects which 
seem to fascinate them from afar, or their exhaustion is 
too great to allow them to raise themselves even one extra 
yard in their rapid flight. Mosso ascribed their impaired 
vision to the cerebral anaemia found in birds exhausted by 
long flights. Later in his book he shows how profoundly a 
diminished circulation of the blood affects the functions of 
nervous tissue in man. A few seconds' pressure upon the 
eyelid, lessening the blood supply, is enough to distort vision, 
and a diminution of the brain's blood supply is followed by 
loss of consciousness after six or seven seconds. f 

Other more recent experiments throw some measure of 
doubt upon these demonstrations of fatigue in the central ner- 
vous system. Some investigators suggest that the first part of 
our neuro-muscular mechanism to tire after sustained contrac- 
tion is the nerve-ending in the muscle, or motor end-plate. t 

♦Hodge, C. F.: Amer. Jour, of Psychology, 1887-1888, Vol. I, p. 
479; 1889, Vol. II, p. 376. Jour, of Morphology, 1892, Vol. VII, p. 95. 

Vas, Fr.: Archiv fiir mikroskopische Anatomic, 1892, Vol. XL, p. 375. 

Mann, Gustav: Jour, of Anatomy & Physiology, 1894, Vol. XXIX,p. 100. 

Lugaro, E.: LoSperimentale, Sezione biologica, 1895, Vol. XLIX, p. 159. 

Eve, F. C: Jour, of Physiology, 1896, Vol. XX, p. 334. 

t Mosso, Angelo: La Fatica. Milano, 1891. English translation, 
pp. 1-29, 72 and 73. New York, Putnam, 1904. 

J MiJlier, G. E.: Zeitschrift fiir Psychologic und Physiologic der 
Sinnesorgane, 1893, Vol. IV, p. 122. 

Muller, Robert: Wundt's Philosop. Studien, 1901, Vol. XVII, p. 1. 

Hough, Theodore: Amer. Jour, of Physiology, 1901, Vol. V, p. 240. 

Storey, Thomas A. ; Amer. Jour, of Physiology, 1903, Vol. VI 1 1, p. 355. 

Jotcyko, Mile. J.: Fatigue. Richet's Diet, de Physiologic. Paris, 
1904, Vol. VI, p. 29. 

Woodworth, R. S.r N. Y. University Bulletin of the Medical Sciences, 
1901, Vol. I, p. 133. 

31 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Scientists themselves disagree as to the precise nature 
and locaHzation of nervous fatigue. Little is known as to 
the production of fatigue substances by the central system. 
It may even be that central nerve cells are less readily sus- 
ceptible to fatigue than has been supposed and that they 
succumb only to a really high degree of exertion. Yet it 
should be clearly understood that the uncertainty of scientists 
as, to the precise localization of nervous fatigue does not touch 
the acknowledged fatiguability of some portion, not yet 
completely verified, of our nervous endowment. Thus 
Professor Frederic S. Lee, one of the physiologists who in- 
clines most strongly to the belief that central cells are more 
resistant than has been supposed, specifically states that 
"nervous fatigue is an undoubted fact,''* and that, "we can- 
not deny fatigue to psychic centers,'' though " the intimate 
relations of central and peripheral fatigue are much in need 
of exact experimental study. "f 

Moreover, it is not essential to our present inquiry to 
know whether muscle or nerve substances tire first, or exactly 
what part of our nervous system is first affected. These still 
unsolved problems may not go unmentioned in any account 
of the study of fatigue. They are the unanswered questions 
fronting the scientist, for whom the "humblest catabolic 
product" must be a challenge, until he has plucked out the 
mystery of its composition and effect. For our purposes it 
is enough to realize that nervous fatigue, be it central or 
peripheral, exists, a relentless fact, reacting inexorably upon 
our total health and life. It is the form of fatigue most 
fraught with possibilities of mischief. For when fatigue 
affects the nervous system, it attacks what has been called 
the "administrative instrument of the individual," which 
"directs, controls and harmonizes the work of the parts of 
the organic machine and gives unity to the whole." 

When that administrative instrument is impaired by 
overwork and exhaustion, formidable forms of disease appear 

*0p. cit., Science, N. S., Vol. XXIX, No. 744, p. 525. 
t Op. cit., Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 180. 

32 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

which we shall subsequently view so far as they may be traced 
to industrial causes. But first we must proceed to examine 
how nervous fatigue is manifested in the laboratory. 

6. THE RISE AND FALL OF WORKING CAPACITY 

(a) Work Continued Under Fatigue Costs More Effort 

One of the most valuable contributions of the Turin 
school was in proving graphically the nervous strain in over- 
work. 

It is a fact familiar to every one that work done after 
fatigue has set in requires much greater expenditure of ner- 
vous energy than work done before fatigue. This is illus- 
trated by the simple act of holding up a weight in out- 
stretched arms after they have become tired. It is shown in 
the so-called tension of the will needed to complete a difficult 
task, the unmistakable sense of effort in '' keeping-up." 

Mosso showed that a much stronger electric stimulus is 
required to make a wearied muscle contract than one which 
is rested. He devised an apparatus, the ponometer, which 
records the curve of nervous effort required to accomplish 
muscular action as fatigue increases. He showed that the 
nerve centers are compelled to supply an ever stronger 
stimulus to fatigued muscles. As the muscle tires and ac- 
complishes less work, more and more energy must be supplied 
for contraction. In the language of the laboratory, the 
ponometric curve follows a course which is the inverse of the 
ergographic curve; or, more intelligibly put, effort increases 
with fatigue. 

In another way, and as impressively, Maggiora showed 
how much greater effort is needed to make wearied than fresh 
muscles work. He found that after his finger muscles were 
exhausted by a series of contractions in the ergograph, he had 
to allow a two-hour rest before they were completely rested. 
If he diminished this period, and allowed only one and one- 
half hour's rest, the muscle was insufficiently restored and 
could not do as much work as when thoroughly rested. 
3 33 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

By analogy it might be supposed that if the work were 
lessened, the period of rest might be reduced in the same pro- 
portion; that if Maggiora cut in half the work which re- 
quired two hours' rest, he would need only one hour to recover 
entirely from a shorter series of contractions. But experi- 
ment proved, surprisingly, that even less rest was needed after 
the shorter period of work. If work is reduced by one-half, 
the period of necessary rest can actually be reduced half 
or three-quarters as much again. Thus, if 30 contractions 
exhaust the finger muscle so that it needs two hours' rest, 
15 contractions require not one hour but only a half-hour 
for recuperation. In other words, the expenditure of energy 
in the last 15 contractions, after fatigue has set in, is 
much greater than the energy expended in the first 15 
contractions, since the last set of contractions exhaust the or- 
ganism much more than the first set. 

Moreover, the tracings of work done in the second set of 
contractions are much smaller than the first tracings; the 
output falls off, as we say of industrial work. " Hence strain, 
or work done after fatigue has set in, not only costs more 
effort but accomplishes less. " The last 15 contractions are 
decidedly smaller, while the effort to keep up costs the organ- 
ism four times as long a rest for recuperation. 

The ergographic record shows also the remarkable re- 
cuperative effect of rest taken at the critical moment before 
exhaustion is reached. For if work is stopped after the first 
set of contractions, before the muscle is completely exhausted, 
it accomplishes just twice the amount of work which was 
produced when the muscle was pushed to the actual point of 
exhaustion. As Mosso puts it:* 

"Our body is not constructed like a locomotive which 
consumes the same quantity of coal for every kilogrammetre 
of work. When the body is fatigued, even a small amount of 

work produces disastrous effects The workman 

that persists in his task when he is already fatigued not only 
produces less effective work, but receives greater injury to his 
organism." 

* Op. cit., English translation, pp. 152 and 157. 

34 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

(b) The Nature of Training 
Professor Treves at Turin, a follower of Mosso, throws 
further light upon the injuries due to an excessive run upon 
nervous energy. It is a wellknown fact that in muscular 
exertion there is a marked gain in efficiency during the first 
period of work. In the muscular contractions of men as 
well as of animals, the curve of fatigue rises before it begins 
to fall. That is, before fatigue begins to diminish the muscle's 
power of contracting, there is a period during which the muscle 
gains strength at every effort and is able to raise the weight 
to a higher and higher level. This upward progression of 
the curve is known to physiologists as the staircase, or 




Fig. 6 
Series of contractions of a frog's sartorius muscle, excised and stimu- 
lated at intervals of two and one half seconds. Each successive vertical 
line is the record of a single contraction, The contractions at first increase 
in extent, this stage constituting the treppe, and later decrease, this stage 
constituting fatigue. 



"treppe.'' The treppe means that, in its early stages, the 
working power of muscle is augmented. Its physiological 
irritability, or power of responding to a stimulus, increases, 
so that the same stimulus results in greater contractions. 
After a certain period the treppe is at its height, and contrac- 
tion continues at its maximum until the development of 
fatigue causes it to diminish and fail. 

In the study of isolated muscle these three general 
though not sharply defined stages of work may be observed. 
First, the treppe, when working power is on the increase 
and excitability is growing; second, the period when the 
muscle is in its best working condition, its excitability 
highest; and third, the period when fatigue products clog 

35 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the muscle more and more until contraction is finally forced 
to cease. 

These three general stages of work, graphically shown in 
the contractions of isolated muscle, are familiar to every one 
in ordinary experience. It is an epitome of life at which we 
are looking — a picture of human work drawn without per- 
spective. Everyone knows that in every long-continued 
task, the first stage is one of "limbering up"; then we 
gradually reach the plane where our working power is at its 
maximum (more or less variable to be sure), until fatigue 
inclines it unmistakably downward towards our minimum — 
the zero of exhaustion. 

Training is of inestimable value in all work, as well as 
in sports. It increases our working capacity by practically 
retarding the onset of fatigue for a longer or shorter period. 
It does this by making the tissues more or less resistant to 
those poisons which, as we have seen, are generated in action 
and accumulate unduly in overexertion. 

Training, like the fatigue which it combats, has a true 
physiological basis, and physiology explains its virtue as 
clearly as it does the essential injuries of fatigue. It is a 
wellknown fact that the body adapts itself in extraordinary 
measure to even large quantities of poisonous drugs, when 
they are taken in gradually increasing doses. So, also, it 
adapts itself to moderate and increasing amounts of the 
fatigue poisons. Now, proper physical training provides 
graded and increasing exercises, and these increasing exer- 
cises, by producing successively larger amounts of fatigue 
poisons, inure the tissues gradually to such poisonous prod- 
ucts. This resistance of tissue to the depressant action of 
our self-generated poisons is the most important element in 
all training or practice. 

The athlete is enabled by training to undergo exertions 
which would kill an ordinary untrained man. Training even 
saves a certain amount of nervous energy by a more ready 
coordination of muscles and by calling upon a smaller number 
of muscles than are used by the untrained man. 

36 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

The question, however, arises whether in intensive 
regular labor which makes great demands on the organism, 
muscular efficiency may not be bought at too dear a cost of 
nervous energy. Overtraining is as unmistakable a phenom- 
enon as training, and the pathologic effects of overtraining 
are not confined to athletes. We have seen that the strain 
of the wearied muscle to keep up, after fatigue has set in, 
costs more effort and accomplishes less than the work of 
unwearied muscle; we have seen that nervous stimulation 
must increase as working capacity declines. Now Professor 
Treves asserts that when muscles have attained their greatest 
strength, the nervous energy at their command will not have 
grown in proportion. He says:* 

"According to my experience, it has not been found 
that training has as favorable an effect upon energy as upon 
muscular strength. . . . This fact explains why mus- 
cular training cannot go beyond certain limits and why 
athletes are often broken down by the consequences of over- 
exertion. And this fact teaches also the practical necessity 
of preventing women, children, and even adult men from be- 
coming subjected to labor which, indeed, a gradual muscular 
training may make possible but at the price of an excessive 
loss of nervous energy which is not betrayed by any obvious 
or immediate symptom, either objective or subjective. 
While the individual works, the reserves of disposable nervous 
energy in the neurones which preside over muscles diminish 
much more rapidly than the production of work which may 
keep to the normal level. ... In spite of this diminu- 
tion, if circumstances continually demand intense and con- 
stant work, the stimulus will continue to be sent to the muscle 
with the intensity necessary to accomplish the purpose. . . 

" Here we have an arrangement of things which is of 
inestimable value to man in the production of work; but 
this beneficent provision becomes injurious to the dynamic 
equilibrium of the organism as soon as it is irrationally em- 
ployed. It is this that needs to be avoided in the practical 
organization of industry.'' 

* Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography 
Brussels, 1903, Vol. V, Sec. IV, pp. 6-7. Treves, Dr. Z. (University of 
Turin): Dans quelle mesure peut-on par des methodes physiologiques 
etudier la fatigue, ses modaHtes et ses degres dans les diverses professions. 

37 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

One Step more and we reach the terminus of our analysis. 
We have seen that the curve of muscular work normally 
begins to decline after it has reached its maximum, when the 
fatigue products clog the muscles excessively. Now it is a 
fact of vast consequence to our total health that with nervous 
fatigue the curve of work often does not descend as nor- 
mally it should. Nervous fatigue may indeed seem to in- 
crease our working capacity temporarily. Most persons are 
familiar with what is colloquially called "working on one's 
nerves," when nervous fatigue instead of depressing our 
working capacity, as it normally should do, stimulates it to 
greater activity. The temporary increase in efficiency is, 
of course, illusive, though it may for a while lead to a really 
heightened capacity. But at too dear a cost ! After a longer 
or shorter period the false stimulation breaks like a bubble, 
leaving the worker nervously unstrung and dropped abruptly 
down to a plane of eificiency far lower than normal fatigue 
should have declined to. 

This form of nervous over-stimulation thus conceals from 
the worker the oncoming of fatigue, so that he may ap- 
proach the stage of exhaustion before he is aware of the fact. 
Consciousness of fatigue does not at all keep pace with the 
progressive exhaustion of the nervous mechanism, with its 
apparently heightened irritability or power of response. 

At this point the scientific interpretation of industrial 
problems advocated at the outset of this study becomes 
obvious enough. A flood of light is thrown upon the intri- 
cate injuries of speed, overtime, piece-work, and the like 
industrial requirements. For if fatigue be due to demon- 
strated chemical action, removable only by proper intervals 
of rest; if overfatigue or exhaustion results from the accumu- 
lation of chemical fatigue products and the destruction of 
energy-yielding material in nerve and muscle tissue; if 
strain or labor carried on after fatigue has set in is proved 
more exhausting than simple work, and if muscular training 
outruns nervous strength, — then the need for the shorter 

38 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 

workday rests upon a scientific basis. Science makes out its 
case for the short day in industry. 

No one has expressed this mission of science to labor and 
industrial legislation with more discernment than M. Hector 
Denis, of the Belgian Council of Labor. In a few eloquent 
sentences he has transformed the dry business of law-making 
into a calling of insight and the imagination.* 

"Man has a new right," he says, "the right to leisure 
and rest, as well as work. . . . The history of labor 
legislation can be given in two words: The right to rest is 
inherent in man's physiological structure. From this follows 
the social need to do away with the exhaustion resulting from 
overwork and to conserve working power, the most precious 
possession of a nation. . . . Science traces out a path 
for the modern lawmaker. His difficult but glorious mis- 
sion is to accomplish the normal synthesis of these two in- 
alienable rights springing from the very laws of life — the 
right to use one's working powers and the right to conserve 
them." 

7. THE GREATER MORBIDITY OF WOMEN 

We have now examined some of the features of our 
common physiologic life, persistent, though varying with our 
ages, our states of health, our native intensities, our individual 
psychological motives and checks. Before proceeding to 
examine some industrial operations and their demands on 
human energies, it remains to point out the special suscepti- 
bility to fatigue and disease which distinguishes the female 
sex, qua female. 

This physiological differentiation between men and 
women is important in this study because women's physiolog- 
ical handicaps make them subject more than men to the 
new strain of industry. If now the health of women in 
industry is shown to be specially open to the inroads of 
fatigue and disease on account of their physical make-up, 
they clearly need the protection of special laws. 

* Royaume de Belgique. Conseil Superieur du Travail, 6e Session. 
1901-1902. T. I., Fasc. II. Le Repos Hebdomadaire, pp. 168 and 169. 

39 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

It goes without saying that the fundamental fact which 
distinguishes women physiologically from men, is their par- 
ticular sex function — the bearing of children. Their anat- 
omy and physiology is adapted for this primal function, 
whether or not it is ever to be realized, whether or not they 
are ever to become mothers of children. The unmarried as 
well as the married woman, therefore, is subject to the phy- 
sical limitations of her sex, and each suffers alike from those 
incidents of industrial work most detrimental to the female 
reproductive system, such as overstrain from excessive speed 
and complexity, prolonged standing, and the absence of a 
monthly day of rest. These and similar conditions are com- 
mon to most industrial operations and they are particularly 
harmful to women. 

In addition to their susceptibility to injuries of the 
generative organs, working women have been found more 
liable than men to disease in general. There is a consensus of 
opinion among those who have longest observed girls and 
women at work, that the burdens of industrial life press 
much more heavily upon them than upon men. Wherever 
statistics of the morbidity of both workingmen and working- 
women exist, the morbidity of women is found to be higher. 
Such statistics do not exist in this country, but they are to be 
found abroad in the records of foreign sickness insurance 
societies.* The two most important facts to be noted are 
women's higher morbidity when compared with men in the 
same occupations, and their longer duration of illness, meas- 
ured by the number of days lost from work. 

More than twenty years ago the eminent Swiss writers, 
Schuler and Burckhardt, the one a factory inspector and the 
other professor of hygiene at Bale, showed t that in cotton 
mills where both sexes were employed the relative morbidity 
of men and women was as 100 : 128. This was in the spin- 

* See Journal of the American Medical AssoZtation, Vol. LI I, No. 2, 
p. 138. Editorial. Jan. 9, 1909. 

t Schuler, Dr. Fridolin, und Burckhardt, Dr. A. E.: Untersuchungen 
iiber die Gesundheitsverhaltnisse der Fabrikbevolkerung der Schweiz, 
p. 34. Aarau, Sauerlander, 1889. 

40 



THE NATURE OF FATIGUE 



ning rooms. In the weaving rooms the morbidity of women 
was even higher, being as 139 : 100. 

These figures have since been confirmed and ampHfied 
by other authorities. The most recent authoritative Ameri- 
can book on workingmen's compensation gives the morbidity 
figures of German insurance societies during a period of 
years. These figures concern men and women not of the 
same trades. The number of cases of sickness among men 
is greater than among women, but the duration of women's 
illnesses is longer. Hence, what is technically called the 
co-efficient of morbidity, that is, the "duration of sickness 
per member each year," is higher for women than for men.* 



■m, 



PER CENT AND DURATION OF SICKNESS IN GERMAN SICKNESS 
INSURANCE SOCIETIES, 1888-1907 





1888 


1892 


1903 


1904 


1905 


1906 


1907 


Cases of sick- ] Men 


33.5 


36.8 


38.3 


40.9 


41.4 


39.4 


42.7 


ness per year 
per 100 in- 
sured. J Women 


28.8 


31.1 


33.0 


35.4 


35.0 


33.4 


35.6 


Average num- 
ber of days 
of sickness 
per case 


Men 
Women 


16,6 
17.7 


17.0 
18.3 


18.1 
21.9 


18.7 
23.2 


18.7 
23.5 


18.5 
24.1 


18.5 
23.4 


Days of sick- Men 


555.6 


626.6 


695.3 


762.1 


775.9 


728.6 


788.7 


ness per an- 
num per 100 
insured 


Women 


508.3 


569.7 


720.4 


822.9 


927.9 


804.7 


833.1 



^^1<^ 

^A..- 
^O-^' 






^"^ . O^ 



4^' 



The same thing is shown in a recent Swiss report regarding 
the morbidity of men and women in the Swiss mutual insur- 
ance societies.! 

* Frankel, Lee K., and Dawson, Miles W.: Workingmen's Insurance 
in Europe, pp. 240 and 241. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New 
York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 

t Die Gegenseitige Hilfsgesellschaften in der Schweiz im Jahre 1903. 
Berne, 1907. 







iS 



^^ 



ir-> 



41 



'^i 



^^^ 







FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

"Among 100 insured men an average of 26.76 received 
sick relief; but among 100 women only 24.26. The men who 
received sick relief averaged 23.55 days of illness; the women 
averaged 32.46. 

"The women, therefore, showed a lower percentage of 
relief but a longer average duration of sick time, and as a 
result of these two circumstances the average morbidity of 
the women is higher than that of the men — 7.87 as against 
6.30." 

A German authority gives somewhat less recent but 
interesting comparative figures of German and Austrian sick- 
ness insurance societies, showing in each case the same longer 
duration of women's illnesses. For each 100 persons the days 
of illness per person averaged as follows: In the German 
society referred to, the men averaged 21.6 days lost through 
illness, the women averaged 24.4 days so lost. In the Aus- 
trian society the men lost on an average 16.5 days as com- 
pared with an average of 18.8 days lost by the women.* 

Thus are women physiologically handicapped by a 
greater general liability to disease, and a peculiar suscepti- 
bility to injuries of the generative organs. In a word, they 
are less resistant to fatigue than men, and their organisms 
suffer more gravely than men's from the strains and stresses 
of industrial life, to whose newer aspects we are next to turn. 

* Prinzing, Dr. Friedrich: Handbuch der Medizinischen Statistik, 
p. 110. Jena, Fischer, 1906. 



42 



HI 
THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

WHAT, then, are the special forms of overstrain found 
in modern industry, viewing industrial conditions, 
as was our premise, from the physiological point of 
view? In a brief sketch of this vast field it will be possible 
to single out only a very few features for comment. We can 
do no more than glance, as it were, at some of the innumer- 
able processes which directly or indirectly feed the machinery 
of the world, supplying man's needs and luxuries. 

Of those elements in industry which are most charac- 
teristic and which make the greatest demands on human 
energies, we may select the following: speed and complexity, 
monotony, piece-work, and overtime. Let us attempt to 
gauge the part played by these factors in a few trades, so as 
to have before us some concrete examples of industrial things 
as they are. Other fatiguing influences in machine work, 
such as noise and the mechanical rhythms, will of necessity 
come within the scope of our brief analysis, as well as the now 
recognized relation between fatigue and the incidence of 
industrial accidents. 

1. SPEED AND COMPLEXITY 

(a) The Telephone Service 
Let us begin with our first factors, speed and complexity. 
Measured by these, few trades can equal in their demands 
upon the human organisrn an occupation newly open to the 
girls and women of our generation and practically new to the 
last decade. This is the ubiquitous telephone service, — that 
network of wires which spans continents and binds together, 

43 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

as never before in history, at least the outward and visible 
activities of men. Indeed, we could scarcely picture to our- 
selves the spectacle of modern life without a telephone at 
every hand, servant of every whim and desire, and by the 
same token, a new tyrant that few can escape. 

Now, one part of this mechanism, one link in the chain 
between two speakers, is the girl's voice which answers every 
call by day or night, a link, to most persons, as disembodied 
and automatic as the receiver on its hook. 

We are to look a little more closely at this girl's condi- 
tions of work. They are special to her business, but not 
unfairly typical of the new strain in all industry. Two recent 
official investigations* give us an unusual abundance of facts 
by which to gauge that phase of the work in which we are 
here interested: its effects on the health of the workers; 
its cost, not in money, but in the outlay of woman's physio- 
logical powers. 

The whole telephone business is new, dating from 1876. 
Originally it employed only men and boys. In 1907, ac- 
cording to a report of the Bureau of the Census, there were 
76,638 female operators in the United States as against 3,576 
male operators. Something like twice as many persons were 
employed in other positions as clerks, mechanics, officials, and 
so on. We shall confine ourselves here to the work of the 
women operators. 

These thousands of "telephone girls" whose ages vary 
from sixteen years upward, are in a sense picked workers. f 
In most cities, the companies require for the efficiency of the 
service, a physical examination of all applicants, and seek to 
exclude girls and women suffering from eye, ear, throat, or 
heart trouble. Most companies have also an educational 

* Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours 
of Employment between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., 
and Operators at Toronto, Ontario. Ottawa, 1907. 

Investigation of Telephone Companies made by the United States 
Bureau of Labor. Senate Document No. 380, 61st Congress, 2nd Session. 
Washington, 1910. 

t In one large city, out of 6,152 applicants, 2,229 were refused. (Sen- 
ate Document No. 380, p. 19.) 

44 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

requirement, accepting no applicants who have not completed 
the fifth or grammar grades of the public schools. Most 
companies also give a month's training in a telephone school 
where applicants learn the mechanism of the switchboard 
and the manifold duties of telephone operating. 

These picked workers also receive, on the whole, more in- 
telligent care than other industrial workers. Fair ventila- 
tion of workrooms, rest rooms, luncheons provided at cost, 
and free, hot beverages at lunch time, — all these elementary 
"welfare'' provisions have been found useful in keeping up 
the operator's efficiency and are therefore provided by most 
companies. 

So much we have on the credit side of the business, 
physiologically viewed. What, then, is on the debit side? 
To gauge this, we must briefly describe what telephone oper- 
ating is. The most concise description of this intricate sub- 
ject involves a certain amount of technical detail, since the 
simplest form of telephone connection requires eleven sep- 
arate processes on the part of the operator. Yet in no other 
way than by tracing these separate operations can we in- 
telligently gauge the tax of this occupation. The nature of 
the work, the large and daily growing number of girls and 
women engaged in it throughout the country, and the fact 
that prominent physicians in one community have expressed 
themselves forcibly upon its physical effects, warrant our 
devoting material attention to these otherwise unrelated 
details. 

The center of the telephone system is the ''exchange." 
On entering the operating room of an exchange one sees per- 
haps one hundred young women seated side by side, on ad- 
justable chairs facing the switchboard, which extends in the 
form of a semicircle or *'U" around three sides of the room. 
The switchboard looks not unlike a continuous line of up- 
right pianos in front of which the girls are seated. Only, 
the key-board or flat shelf extending out from the six-foot 
high vertical face of the board is usually wider than a piano 
key-board, varying in width from six inches to a foot. The 

45 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

vertical face of the board is marked off into sections and 
panels, honey-combed with holes. Each hole in the lower 
panel of the vertical board is the terminal of a subscriber's 
telephone, and the holes are so distributed that each operator 
has before her a certain number of telephones for which she 
is directly responsible. Just over each hole, or "answering 
jack'' as it is called, there is a glass-covered orifice, containing 
a miniature incandescent lamp, which glows whenever a 
subscriber lifts his receiver from the hook. This light, to- 
gether with a clicking sound which she hears through her 
receiver whenever she " listens in," signals to the operator that 
she is being called. 

On the upper half of the vertical board known as the 
"multiple" are the terminals, or jacks, of all telephones con- 
nected with the exchange, by means of which the operator 
can connect her subscribers with the persons whom they wish 
to reach. These upper jacks are repeated or "multiplied" 
over and over throughout the switchboard, usually once in 
each section, or each six feet, so that the operator can reach 
any line for which she is asked. 

On the horizontal shelf or key-board, extending out from 
the vertical face of the board, there are two rows of small 
metal plugs, attached to cords, the points of the plugs alone 
showing above the surface of the board. A little nearer to 
the operator, on the shelf, are two rows of tiny glass-covered 
signal lamps similar to those over the subscribers' jacks de- 
scribed above, and still closer to the operator, on the shelf, 
there is a row of small levers or keys. 

Such is the apparatus, together with the operator's in- 
dividual "set," — a receiver strapped over her ear and a 
mouth-piece or transmitter suspended so that she can con- 
veniently speak into it, leaving both hands free. When 
a subscriber lifts his receiver to call "central," the signal 
light immediately flashes out at the terminal of his line on 
the switchboard. The operator thereupon gets into com- 
munication with the subscriber by inserting one of the 
plugs with its attached cord into the hole or jack correspond- 

46 



I 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

ing with the glowing light. She then throws forward one of 
the levers known as the "listening key." This connects her 
with the calling subscriber and extinguishes the signal light. 
She asks, in the wellknown phrase, "Number, please,'' and 
upon receiving a reply makes the desired connection as fol- 
lows: She inserts the companion end of the cord which she 
has used (the cords are in pairs with a plug at the end of 
each), into the proper hole on the upper "multiple*' portion 
of the board, bearing the number of the desired person. She 
also rings up this second person by pressing another lever, at 
the same time discontinuing her listening key.* Then she 
makes her first entry upon a prescribed slip, in order to 
register the call. 

Thus two subscribers are in communication. But there 
must be some way for the operator to learn automatic- 
ally when the conversation is ended. Therefore each pair of 
cords have connected to them two of the tiny signal lamps. 
When the operator inserts the plugs into the jacks their cor- 
responding lights begin to glow. As soon as the called sub- 
scriber lifts his receiver the signal light goes out, showing 
the operator that her ringing has been answered. The 
lights remain out during conversation, but as soon as the 
subscribers have finished and hang their receivers, the lights 
above the companion plugs again begin to glow. This warns 
the operator to sever the connections and to clear the jacks 
for the next call. 

Thus the telephone girl must be continually at the top- 
notch of expectancy, watching intently for the flash of the 
signal lights, responding instantly to the clicking sounds 
heard whenever impatient subscribers move their hooks up 
and down, making and severing connections with all the 
speed she may. 

The mere statement of these operations in the simplest 
form of telephone connection, gives us some insight into the 
prodigious strain of this occupation upon the special senses, — 

* In New York City, the operation of ringing and listening is done 
with one key. 

47 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

sight, hearing, touch, — as well as the muscular exertion of 
reaching high up and to the side. We cannot here enter into 
the complex modifications of the general system described 
above (as when a subscriber is called whose telephone ter- 
minates in a different exchange), and the many different color 
signals which the operator must instantly recognize when 
they flash before her, such as, toll calls, nickel machine calls, 
and many others. 

As regards the physical effects of the work, we are 
fortunately not thrown upon surmise but have expert medical 
testimony to draw upon. This is available in the remarkable 
report of the royal commission appointed to investigate a 
dispute between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada and 
their operators at Toronto. The 26 physicians who testified 
had examined the exchanges and the nature of the work. 
We must postpone until our next chapter their detailed state- 
ments as to the detriment to health from overwork in the 
taxing telephone service, the specific injuries to the sense 
organs, and the disastrous reactions upon the operator's 
nervous system. Here it is enough to say that after weigh- 
ing the physicians' testimony and recommendations, the 
royal commission, with some misgivings, permitted the total 
number of working hours for women switchboard operators 
to be fixed at seven hours, broken by several relief periods 
and spread over a period of nine hours. 

The commission took pains to say, however, that in 
view of the medical evidence before them, a seven-hour work- 
day for telephone operators seemed to them " still too long,'' 
and they concluded : 

" In our opinion a day of six working hours spread over 
a period of from eight to eight and three-quarter hours, and 
under as favorable conditions as may be expected in an ex- 
change doing a large business, is quite long enough for a 
woman to be engaged in this class of work, if a proper regard 
is to be had for the effect upon her health."* 

* Two hours' work, >^ hour relief, \}4 hours' work, 1 hour intermission, 
2 hours' work, ^2 hour relief, and l}4 hours' work. Report of the Royal 
Commission, pp. 99-100. 

48 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

Such being the royal commission's mature conclusions, 
we turn to consider the same work in the United States, as 
set forth in the recent report of the United States Bureau of 
Labor. The methods of operating here and in Canada are 
the same. 

Where the royal Canadian commission found seven 
hours "still too long" and recommended six hours, we find 
the average hours of work in the United States reported as 
eight and a half hours per day. But this is one of the aver- 
ages which hide the truth, and, in practice, owing to various 
reasons, the actual working hours are much longer. Tele- 
phone operators are divided into various working groups, or 
"tricks," who come on and go off duty at widely varying 
terminal hours, and have their luncheon and relief periods at 
separate times. During certain busy hours of the day, known 
as " peak of the load," morning and afternoon, the service is 
vastly increased and requires an increased number of oper- 
ators. These various arrangements of work are necessary 
because the telephone exchange is never closed. The fires 
of Vesta burn day and night! They must be tended un- 
ceasingly. 

If the average working hours are eight and a half per day, 
then many girls must work longer than that each day, as 
others work less. Thus, to mention merely at random some 
daily hours far in excess of the average eight and a half, 
in 1910 the night operators of the Bell Telephone System 
were reported working fifteen hours in Springfield, Missouri; 
twelve hours in Kansas City, Missouri; nine hours in New 
Orleans, Louisiana, and in Dallas, Texas. Day operators 
were reported as employed ten hours net in Kansas City, 
and nine hours net in Atlanta, Georgia. And the day oper- 
ators of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company 
were reported as employed nine hours net in Kansas City 
and New York City.* 

The requirement of overtime work makes the workday 
even longer, although the hours officially reported already 

* Senate Document No. 380, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, pp. 37 and 38. 
4 49 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

by far exceed the maximum deemed compatible with health 
by the Canadian physicians. 

The custom of requiring overtime in most companies 
lengthens the workday by adding from a few minutes to two 
and a half hours. The American report is full of references 
to this pernicious practice. In one city, for instance, where 
overtime is "not above the average,'' the company reports 
that, on overtime, their day operators are on the premises 
twelve and a half hours and on duty ten hours. Overtime is 
stated to be an "integral part'' of the schedule of hours in a 
number of telephone companies. 

"Operators not only are asked to take their turn in 
working extra hours, but in some companies a regular extra 
period is assigned to each operator for certain days each week. 
She is virtually compelled to do this extra work, lest by re- 
fusing she incur the displeasure of her chief operator, or get 
the reputation of shirking her share of work."* 

The report of the commission to investigate the condi- 
tions of working women in Kentucky, states that in one 
exchange where the regular hours were nine in one day, an 
operator worked 39 hours overtime during the first two weeks 
of November, 1911, in addition to her daily work. The 
report adds: "This is not an exceptional case. Many other 
girls are working as long hours."t 

One of the most vicious forms of overtime is known as 
"working through"; that is, working on both a day and a 
night shift. Thus, in one company, where the shift known 
as the "split trick operators" usually work eight hours 
(from 11 a. m. to 2 p. m., and from 4 to 9 p. m.), an operator 
who "works through" is employed thirteen and one-half 
hours (from 11 a. m. to 2 p. m., and again from 4 p. m. to 7 
the next morning), with four and one-half hours off duty 
during the night. 

* Senate Document No. 380, p. 110. 

t Report of the Commission to Investigate the Conditions of Working 
Women in Kentucky, p. 30. Louisville, December, 1911. 

50 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

"The next day the operator reports as usual. In one 
case a fifteen-year-old girl (who claims to be sixteen) is re- 
ported 'working through' four times in two weeks. While 
this is not a regular thing/' says the report, "it is done with 
sufficient frequency to be worth noting.''* 

In connection with overtime work, nothing is more 
striking than the extreme variation in the number and per- 
centage of operators employed on overtime in various cities. 
In New York City, for instance, it is reported that less than 
one-fifth of one per cent of the operators work overtime in a 
given period. In Boston and Washington, also, the number 
is small, while in New Orleans and Omaha over 90 per cent of 
the operators worked overtime during the same period. In 
Cleveland, Louisville, and Nashville, over 85 per cent, in 
San Francisco and Dallas, Texas, and Atlanta, Georgia, over 
60 per cent of the operators are reported to have worked 
overtime. t 

Besides overtime, several other hardships of the tele- 
phone service which are prominent in the American report, 
and greatly intensify the strain of this occupation, need 
mention. One of these is the almost universal requirement 
of Sunday work twice a month. This hardship speaks for 
itself and scarcely needs comment. It means that for most 
operators the day of rest, which may not be lost without 
physiological retribution, comes only once a fortnight. 
Sunday and holiday work clearly cannot be avoided in the 
telephone service, but as the report remarks, only two large 
companies "have discovered that this need not mean seven 
days' work each week." 

A second acute hardship of the service concerns the relief 
periods, usually fifteen minutes long, which are designed 
to break the morning and afternoon work. The Canadian 
physicians laid supreme stress upon the importance of such 
reliefs as absolutely indispensable periods of recuperation, 
considering even twenty minutes off duty too short to com- 
pensate for a two-hour period of work; but in many com- 

* Senate Document No. 380, pp. 111-112. f Ibid., pp. 90-91. 

51 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

panics these reliefs are regarded by the management as favors 
to be given or withheld at v/ill, rather than necessities. At 
any "rush" when most needed, the rehefs are most often 
curtailed. Of 331 girl operators interviewed by agents of 
the Bureau of Labor, 126, or more than one-third, reported 
that they had either no relief or received it only on request. 

"Where this system obtains, girls feel a reluctance to 
ask for relief; sometimes they feel that to do so is to jeopard- 
ize promotions, and the new operators who need it most are 
usually the very ones who fail to get it, because a feeling of 
strangeness or timidity keeps them from asking favors."* 

A third hardship of the telephone service, as disastrous 
to the operator's health as the loss of the "relief," is known 
as "excess loading." This concerns the number of calls 
handled by each operator per hour. Most of the experts for 
the companies consider 225 calls per hour the "breaking 
point of efficiency," that is, the number which cannot be 
greatly exceeded for many minutes without injuring the 
service rendered to the public. As the report rightly states : 

" It is safe to say that the breaking point of the operator's 
health is not far from the breaking point of efficient work."t 

" She is expected to give all the subscribers the quickest 
possible service in the order in which their calls come in, but 
when several signals come at once and others come before 
these can be cared for, the order of calls is necessarily lost 
and the effort is concentrated merely on clearing the board, or 
catching up. It must not be forgotten that with each signal 
there is not only the flashing of a small light in the operator's 
eyes, but there is a clicking sound in her ears through the 
receivers fastened to her head. So when the impatient sub- 
scriber, angry because his call has not been answered, moves 
the receiver hook of his 'phone up and down rapidly, he 
flashes the signal light in front of the operator, and produces 
a click in her ears every time the hook goes up and down. 
The consciousness of numbers of people waiting for call con- 
nections she is unable to make, and that each one is growing 
more impatient each second; that a supervisor is standing 

* Senate Document No. 380, p. 33. f Ibid., p. 60. 

52 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

behind her either hurrying her or calHng her numbers to be 
taken by other operators; that a monitor may plug in and 
criticise any moment, — these, with the height of up-reach 
and length of side-reach, go to form the elements of strain on 
the operator who is 'overloaded/''* 

Yet, in spite of its known effect upon health and effi- 
ciency, an inexcusable degree of overloading exists in a wide 
range of cities, chiefly in the south and west. Accepting an 
average of 225 calls per hour as the breaking point, many 
exchanges were found exceeding that number for all operators 
in the exchange. The table below gives some of the cities 
found exceeding not only this accepted limit, but exceeding 
275 calls per hour.f 



TELEPHONE EXCHANGES IN FIVE CI 


TIES WHERE CALLS 


EXCEED 


275 PER HOUR 






Company 


City 


Exchange 


Hour 
Ending 


No. of 
Calls 


Mo. and Kansas Tel. 










Co 


Kansas City, Mo. 


West 


9P.M. 


281.7 


Pac. Tel. and Tele- 








graph Co 


Los Angeles, Cal. 


East 


6P.M. 


285.2 




■ 




7 P.M. 


317.0 








8 P.M. 


303.0 




San Francisco, 


Market 


11P.M. 


279.0 




Cal. 












Franklin 


3 P.M. 


308.3 




Seattle, Wash. 


Queen Ann 


6P.M. 


283.2 


So. Bell Tel. and Tele- 










graph Co 


Birmingham, Ala. 


Main 


11P.M. 


301.5 







(b) Speed in the Needle Trades 
Turning now to other industries in which women and 
children are employed in great numbers, we find a similar 
* Ibid., p. 56. t Ibid., p. 61. 

53 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

State of affairs. Let us next consider the typically feminine 
occupation of sewing, the traditional sphere of womankind. 

It is undeniable that a great saving of human energy 
was accomplished when the first power machines replaced 
the ordinary foot sewing machine. Long hours of work at 
foot sewing machines had been responsible for many female 
disorders and had wrecked the lives of many women. But 
we must not close our eyes to the cost of the new order. 

Mention has already been made of the increasing per- 
fection of motor sewing machines. Some kinds, as we have 
seen, now carry 12 needles, others set almost 4000 stitches a 
minute. Let any observer enter a modern roaring, vibrating 
workroom where several hundred young women are gathered 
together, each at her marvelous machine, which automatically 
hems, tucks, cords, sews seams together, or sews on the 
embroidery trimming of white underwear. In the well 
equipped shops each girl has a brilliant electric light, often 
unshaded, hanging directly in front of her eyes over the 
machine. Her attention cannot relax a second while the 
machine runs its deafening course, for at the breaking of any 
one of the 12 gleaming needles or the 12 darting threads, the 
power must instantly be shut off. The roar of the machines 
is so great that one can hardly make oneself heard by shout- 
ing to the person who stands beside one. 

What must be the physiological effect of work so carried 
on during long hours? In New York state, for instance, the 
great center for the manufacture of women's stitched white 
wear, which is supposed to have been perfecting its laws for 
women since their first enactment twenty-six years ago, 
young girls who have reached their sixteenth birthday may 
legally be employed at power machines twelve hours in the 
day during five days in the week.* Illegally, they are em- 
ployed even longer at "rush'' seasons. 

The strain of this industry is further intensified by two 

other factors, which will be discussed subsequently more at 

length, but which must not go unmentioned here. Pay so 

*See page 4 for new law enacted in 1912. 

54 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

low that it makes a less than living wage, and great irregular- 
ity of employment, exist in the stitching trades in combina- 
tion with the excessively long hours, possibly because of them. 
These factors, at any rate, make an evil combination, — upper 
and nether millstones between which the health of the girls 
and women in this trade is almost inevitably ground. It is 
true that some girls earn high wages at piece-rates during the 
busy season, reaching $18 and $20 per week. But the busy 
season is short — varying from two to three months for the 
winter, and again for the summer trade, and the year's earn- 
ings of the best paid workers fall short of decent self-support. 
The great majority earn wages so low and so precarious (from 
$4,00 to $8.00 or $10 per week), with weeks and months of 
non-employment, that were it not for the testimony of trust- 
worthy witnesses it would be scarcely credible that women 
living away from home and wholly dependent upon them- 
selves, could support life on such a yearly income.* 

These allied problems of low wages and irregularity of 
work may seem to lead too far afield from our special interest 
in industrial overstrain. But they are closely knit to it, and 
in a dozen ways are related to the length of the day's work. 
With over-long hours, even with the ten-hour day, all that 
double burden of household work added to wage work, which 
no workingwoman can wholly escape, becomes more burden- 
some. Whether she lives at home, her own or her parents', 
and helps in the household, or lives alone and is thrown on 
her own resources for clothing and clean linen as well as for 
food and for some sort of habitat, she must fmd time for some 
domestic duties after her wage work is done. 

Two traditional economies of women, unattained by men, 

are washing their linen, and mending, if not making, their 

own clothes; and after a working day of reasonable length, 

working girls can and do achieve these economies without 

too great a tax upon their endurance. But when overtime 

* Clark, S. A., and Wyatt, Edith: Making Both Ends Meet. New 
York, Macmillan, 1911. (These articles are based upon a study made for 
the National Consumers' League of the income and outlay of more than 
200 working girls, living away from home, in New York City.) 

55 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

confines them, as it does in the stitching trades, until nine 
and ten o'clock at night, irregularly, for weeks in succession, 
we find such pitiable items as those disclosed in the study 
above referred to, of 200 working girls who live away from 
home in New York City. In one case of extreme overwork, 
out of a total yearly expenditure of only $41.85 for all cloth- 
ing, an unhappy overworked girl spent $15.60 for stockings. 
She lacked time and strength for the humblest care of her 
wardrobe, darning stockings, and instead, continued all year 
to buy two pairs a week, at 15 cents each. In another case a 
similar disproportionate expenditure of $23.52 for 24 shirt- 
waists at 98 cents a piece, out of a whole year's expenditure 
of $194.50, resulted also from an exhausted girl's lack of time 
and spirit for mending. The remarkable folly of such ex- 
penditures makes them none the less piteous evidences of the 
exhaustion of these girl operators, alternately overworked at 
high power machines and then left destitute of work and 
health. 

Many other ways might be shown in which low wages 
together with the excessive length of the workday contribute 
to the new strain of industries. Physiologically considered, 
as we shall see, the worst effect of low pay, especially low 
piece-rates such as prevail in the stitching trades, is their 
incentive to a too great intensity of work, and to a feverish 
speed on the part of the operators. 

(c) The Textile Industry 
In the sewing trades, then, the elements of speed and 
complexity are growing by leaps and bounds. The same 
thing is evident in another great trade, employing women and 
children, the textile industry. Here the increasing strain upon 
the workers, due to improved equipment, may be described 
by one of the officials whose daily work brings them into con- 
tact with the conditions of which they speak. 

" For the first time women were interviewed who were 
running twelve and sixteen Draper looms. These machines 

56 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

are practically a recent addition, and are so arranged that 
the filling in the shuttle is changed automatically, thus enab- 
ling them to go at a greater rate of speed and with less inter- 
ruption. The women are not expected to clean, oil or sweep. 
This matter was quite fully discussed and the complaint made 
that the work was too hard, but that they tried to do it, as 
they were dependent upon their positions and they knew there 
were plenty of foreign men waiting for their places. Where 
a woman has been accustomed to tend a six-loom set, with 
the Drapers she is given from twelve to sixteen, which extend 
over quite an area. There is no time for sitting during the 
day, as when employed on the other looms. One woman 
said she could not sleep at night after running these vast 
machines, and many have had to give up their places and 
find other work. 

"This marks another evolution in the machinery world. 
Years ago, a woman tended two slowly running looms. 
Later, as the hours of work grew less, the number of looms was 
increased to four and six, and now with the Drapers, an 
operative is expected to look out for twelve or sixteen."* 

Even this statement does not fully cover the facts. It 
is not uncommon in New England mills for one weaver to 
tend from 16 to 24 Northrup or Draper looms. The number 
of looms attended by one weaver has even risen as high as 36 
in southern and, less frequently, in northern mills. But the 
output is said to be less satisfactory than when each worker 
runs a smaller number of looms. 

It is true that the new automatic attachments of the 
Draper loom enable weavers to run a larger number of such 
machines with no greater effort or fatigue than was formerly 
involved in running a smaller number of old looms. But 
this is true only up to a certain point. According to a liberal 
estimate, after a weaver is required to attend more than 18 
looms, the advantages of the new devices are more than coun- 
terbalanced by the increase in numbers, and the strain of the 
occupation becomes too great. Thus, for instance, the strain 
upon the weaver's attention was greatly lessened by such an 
automatic invention as the recent warp stop-motion, whereby 

* Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics, 
1908, pp. 42-43. 

57 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

power is automatically turned off and the loom stops at 
breakage of the warp. But when one weaver has perhaps 
24 looms to tend in place of the former eight, the strain upon 
attention in watching for the automatic stoppage of the looms 
is even greater than before. Since the weaver's wages depend 
upon the continuous running of the machines, the strain is 
continuous. 

The space over which 24 looms extend requires also much 
more walking on the part of the weaver, since she may be 
called to and fro to any one of the looms in turn, to any place 
in the alley or alleys along which they are ranged. Yet the 
physical and nervous cost of running three times as many 
looms as before the Drapers were invented, has been so little 
regarded that the manufacturers of the loom prophesy* an 
even greater increase in the number of machines per worker. 
They see no reason why in time one weaver should not run 
50 looms, provided only that a sliding seat be arranged along 
the alley to relieve her from constant walking to and fro. If 
this hopeful prophecy is not fulfilled, it will probably be 
due to the unsatisfactory economic results of the machinery 
rather than to any consideration of the human agents. 

2. MONOTONY 

Besides speed and complexity of operation, work with 
the Draper looms illustrates also a third factor in industrial 
strain, mentioned at the outset; that is, monotony of occu- 
pation. Weavers formerly varied their work by cleaning 
and oiling the machines, fetching their own filling, etc. Now 
all these things are done by less skilled hands, while the 
weaver, in order to keep up with the number of her looms, 
attends strictly and continuously to running the machines. 

In all trades, operations tend to become more and more 

machinelike in regularity and sameness. Labor tends to 

become more and more subdivided, each worker performing 

steadily one operation, or part of one operation. 

* Labor Saving Looms, p. 112. Third Edition, The Draper Co., Hope- 
dale, Mass., 1907. 

58 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

This kind of single-minded concentration of the workers 
upon their immediate tasks obviously makes for speed and 
perfection of output. It is an integral part of the new indus- 
trial efficiency of our day and it saves constant waste, both 
of time and of materials. But we must also consider the 
reverse side of the picture. If concentration and subdivision 
are part of the new efficiency they are part, too, of its new 
strain. So far as the workers are concerned, subdivision 
and concentration are added hardships of the long day. For 
they lead to that monotony which results from the endless 
repetition of the same operations, and against which the 
human spirit innately revolts. Monotony, indeed, may make 
highly taxing to our organism work which is ordinarily con- 
sidered light and easy. This may be observed in many 
different occupations. 

(a) The Canneries 

Thus, in the canneries, which are increasing from year 
to year in every fruit and vegetable growing state from Maine 
to California, the chief fatigue of the work is due to its com- 
bined speed and monotony. 

We may well examine a little in detail some of the or- 
dinary cannery processes, because they illustrate the new 
strain of industry which we are considering, and because the 
physical and nervous tax of these occupations has been little 
recognized throughout the country. A comparatively short 
span of time has sufficed to see evolved from the yearly preserv- 
ing and jelly pots of our mothers' generation the highly speeded, 
intricate machinery of the modern canneries. Indeed, the 
transformation of the industry is not yet complete. Canning 
has still the double disadvantage of a household and a factory 
business. Cannery workers suffer from all the pressure and 
speed of great commercial establishments. They suffer also 
from the canner's inadequate methods of management, in- 
herited from the original home work which preceded the 
canneries. When each family provided for itself a winter's 
supply of fruits and sweets, there was little hardship in a 

59 



I 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

few days' work at picking and preserving. It is popularly 
supposed that canning today is very much the same, and 
that it affords farmers' wives and children, in certain parts 
of the country, pleasant holiday work and pin money during 
the summer. 

But in reality this is far from true. We may take as 
typical, in spite of local differences, the canneries in New York 
state, since a recent oificial investigation* describes the con- 
ditions there, and they happen also to be familiar to the writer. 

Any person who is not familiar with these establish- 
ments must imagine them situated sometimes in open coun- 
try, sometimes on the outskirts of small towns, throughout 
the central and western part of New York state. A cannery 
usually consists of one central building, where the machinery 
is supposed to be located, and adjoining sheds where the work 
of preparation — such as stringing beans, husking corn, hulling 
strawberries, peeling beets, tomatoes, etc. — is supposed to be 
performed. 

On the whole, the new strain in the canning industry has 
come, as in most industries, with the introduction of machin- 
ery. It is true that even the familiar work of preparing 
fruits and vegetables for canning has become more taxing to 
the health of the workers, on account of the greater speed at 
which it is done, owing to the very low piece-rates paid for 
this work.f But the main change since canning was taken 
out of private kitchens has been due to the machine processes. 
Two of the most important of these are known as "sorting" 
and "capping.'' 

For "sorting" vegetables, conveyors or endless moving 
bands carry past the girls and women seated or standing at 
the sorting tables, a ceaseless stream of peas or beans to be 
picked over for broken or spotted vegetables, thistle buds, 
or other imperfections. Hour after hour, from morning until 

* Annual Report of the Bureau of Factory Inspection. Report on the 
Work of Children and Women in Canneries. New York State Department 
of Labor, 1908. 

t One-half to one and one-half cents per pound for stringing beans, etc. 

60 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

night (except for stoppages from breakdowns and irregularity 
of supply), the workers' eyes and attention must be intent 
upon the moving stream before them, shoving back the tide 
with one hand if it comes too fast, while with the other they 
pick out the imperfections which must not be allowed to pass 
into the cans. The work is sufficiently easy, so far as mus- 
cular exertion goes, but the tax upon eyes and attention is 
severe, and even after considerable experience, women com- 
plain of the nausea and dizziness resulting from the monot- 
onous examination of the moving surface of the conveyors. 

The work of the "cappers" is more severe than that of 
the ''sorters" on account of the greater speed at which the 
conveyors are run. When the cans have been filled with 
fruits or vegetables, and covered with brine or syrup, they 
are ready to be hermetically sealed. The conveyors carry 
them from the automatic "filler" to the sealing or capping 
machine. One to three "cappers" are employed, who place 
the metal caps or covers on the filled cans in rapid succession 
as they file past swiftly to be soldered. The capping girl sits 
close to the red-hot sealing irons, usually holding a number of 
caps in her hand, and dropping them monotonously, one at a 
time, upon the cans as they pass swiftly on the tireless con- 
veyor, at a rate varying from 54 to 80 cans per minute. It is 
said that a second capper is usually employed on machines 
operating faster than 60 cans per minute. 

The fatigue of the work at the conveyors or sorting 
tables is increased by the unnecessarily constrained and un- 
comfortable positions to which the girls are subjected. The 
tables are rarely at a right height to make this work as easy 
as possible. Sometimes they are so high that the workers 
must stand all day; sometimes so low (3 feet from the ground) 
that the workers cannot sit with their knees under the tables, 
but work in twisted and awkward attitudes. Moreover, the 
seats themselves are totally inadequate. According to the 
New York report, of about 1,400 girls and women engaged in 
sorting peas and beans at various factories in the summer of 
1908, only about 180 had chairs to sit upon. The others 

6i 



J 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

were supplied with inadequate boxes, crates, stools, or benches. 
During a long workday, not infrequently exceeding twelve 
hours, the difference between being comfortably seated at 
work or crouched upon an improvised support is self evident. 
Yet these two operations of "capping'' and "sorting'' em- 
ploy more women in the canneries than any other machine 
operations. The New York report states that about 1,400 
persons were employed at "sorting" peas and beans alone. 
Two hundred and twenty-seven girls were employed in 
"capping" peas, beans, corn, tomatoes, and fruits. 

Besides the work of "sorting" and "capping," another 
machine operation is highly taxing. This is feeding the corn 
cutters, and it is also performed by women. The workers 
feed ears of corn into the cutters at topmost speed. 

"It is very rapid work," says the New York report,* 
''the machine is very noisy, kernels of corn are flying every- 
where, and everything is damp and sticky from the juice of 
the cut corn. Of the 61 women employed at this work, 41 
were standing. The cutters are operated at high speed and 
as 'their capacity is only limited by the rapidity with which 
the feeder can place the ears in the feeding trough,'t the oper- 
ators are expected to work, and do work, at high tension." 

Such is the nature of the most important machine oper- 
ations at which women are employed in the canneries. 

It is true that the working year is short. Canning is, 
perforce, a season trade, though the season lasts much longer 
than merely a few weeks, as the canners would have us sup- 
pose. In establishments which can peas, beans, and corn 
only, the season is from about the last week of June until 
about the middle of October; that is, between three and four 
months. Canneries where fruit is packed have a longer 
season: strawberries ripen in June and apple packing is often 
carried on into December, so that the season lasts between 
six and seven months. 

* Op. cit., p. 374. 

t "Circular of sales house distributing one of the leading makes of 
corn cutters." 

62 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

Even longer duration of employment is reported by the 
latest government investigation of canning establishments 
in Maryland and California. Agents of the United States 
Bureau of Labor studied the conditions of employment in 
both city and country canneries. The government states 
that 10 Baltimore canneries, operated during twenty-nine 
to fifty-two weeks in the year; that is, between seven 
months and an entire year. Four of the canneries reported 
a range of fifty weeks or over. Five city canneries in Cali- 
fornia varied in duration of operation, but four of the five had 
a season of more than twenty-nine weeks; that is, over seven 
months. Four country canneries in California varied between 
nineteen and one-half to twenty-four weeks in operation.* 

Moreover, our studies in fatigue have shown us that 
overwork is not balanced by idleness, when the physiological 
limits have been over-run. Girls in the critical period of 
adolescence, and women who are overstrained during half the 
year, or even during a quarter of the year, may be perma- 
nently wrecked in health. That they are so overstrained 
has been shown by repeated private investigation of New 
York canneries. During the summer of 1911, women were 
observed working fifteen hours a day during successive days. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Bulletin, in 10 Balti- 
more canneries employing 2,214 women the hours of labor 
reported by the employers themselves include "days of 17>^, 
16}4, 15>^ hours, and weeks of 93, 91>^ and 81 hours.'f In 
California, the employers themselves report "days of 18, 15 
and 13}4 hours, and weeks of 96>^, 90 and 83 hours.'' 

In the cannery occupations, eyestrain is an added tax, 
but in many kinds of work it is the sheer repetition of unin- 
teresting samenesses that makes the work fatiguing. So in 
the making of paper boxes, the infinite repetition of me- 
chanical movements — steadying a strip of paper in a box- 
covering machine, guiding it by a gauge and replacing the 

* Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, No. 96, September, 1911. 
Hours of Women's Work in Maryland and California, pp. 355 and 393. 
t Ibid., pp. 355 and 393. 

63 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Strip by another when it runs out — continues for ten hours 
in the day, or longer at "rush" periods. In a factory where 
hinges are made, girls spend a long day's work putting 50 
hinges a minute through a machine, lifting a hinge out, 
slipping it into place, replacing it by another hinge, unvary- 
ingly — and the list of such occupations might be indefinitely 
extended. 

(b) Shoe Making 

Even in trades which require highly skilled workers, the 
processes of manufacture are so subdivided, and are so re- 
duced to the simplest units, that a man or woman spends his 
or her entire working life performing over and over a frac- 
tional part — sometimes less than one-hundredth — in the 
construction of a whole. 

No trade illustrates better this minutest subdivision of 
work than the making of shoes. Ten years ago the United 
States Industrial Commission, in its report on the hours of 
labor in various industries, took occasion to mention speci- 
fically the greater intensity of labor ''in the boot and shoe 
factories where the operator is required to handle thousands of 
pieces in a day and guide them through the machine.'' In 
the decade which has passed since this was written, the 
speed and subdivision of work at shoe machinery have been 
greatly increased. We may obtain an idea of the extraordi- 
nary specialization in this trade at present when we learn that 
a well-built shoe has passed through the hands of about 100 
workers and through the operations of about 60 different 
kinds of shoe making machinery.* These figures do not 
include the workers in the stitching room, where a separate 
force sews together, on specially constructed sewing machines, 
the pieces of leather and lining which make up the so-called 
"uppers." From the stitching room, the flat, sewed uppers 
are sent to the making or "bottoming" room, where they are 
shaped over lasts fastened to the soles, and made up into the 
forms which we recognize as shoes. 

* Goodyear Welt Shoes, How They Are Made. United Shoe Machinery 
Co., Boston, 1909, p. 11. 

64 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

Of all these machines and operations which go into the 
making of shoes, we will examine two a little more closely. 
The first of these is the "upper trimming" machine, through 
which the shoe passes on its way to completion. 

The stitched upper has already been pulled over the 
wooden last, which gives the shoe its shape, by an extra- 
ordinarily ingenious machine that pulls the leather with 
pincers evenly and tightly down over the last, driving in a 
tack at every pull, so as to hold the upper exactly in place on 
the last. In pulling the leather over the bottom edge of the 
last, there is naturally a surplus amount of leather left at 
the rounded toes and some along the sides of the shoe. This 
is "crimpled'' or fulled in against the insole. Now the 
trimming machine, which we are considering, trims off this 
surplus leather fulled in at the toes and side, so as to make 
the bottom as smooth as possible before the sole is sewed on. 
The trimming machine consists of a sharp knife edge, operat- 
ing constantly against a sharp edged revolving top. The 
man who works the machine stands, holding upside down 
somewhat below the level of his eyes, the partly made, still 
unsoled shoe. He turns it skilfully and rapidly on the re- 
volving top, against whose sharp edge the second knife-blade 
operates, cutting off all the surplus crimpled leather. The 
work is extremely rapid and absolutely uniform. But it 
takes skill and close attention. The machine could easily 
cut off too much, or could cut into the upper, if the swift 
handling of the shoe were not exactly correct. The work- 
man must be skilled, but all that constitutes his work is 
daily to revolve in his two hands about 2600 pairs of shoes, 
or 5200 single shoes. The expert workers are able to trim 
off that number of uppers daily in this machine. It is not 
surprising that such monotony of occupation should be a 
factor in fatigue. For the work is unvaried. The man who 
operates the upper trimmer does nothing else. His skill and 
speed have been acquired by the extremest specialization. He 
performs, perhaps, less than one-hundredth part in the making 
of a single shoe, and he does not know how to operate, or 
5 65 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

would be extremely awkward at, the machine next him which 
performs a different hundredth fraction of the manufacture. 

This is men's work in shoe making. The next example 
is women's work. It is the operation of the new eyelet- 
ting machines, which move with what the makers rightly de- 
scribe as " bewildering rapidity." The girl who operates this 
machine sits in front of it, guiding the flat sewn uppers, 
which are to have eyelets punched into them, somewhat as 
she would guide the material in a sewing machine. She 
adjusts levers and various mechanical contrivances to regu- 
late the speed and spacing of the eyelets. Women maintain 
that they can work faster than men at this machine, because 
they can keep a supply of uppers ready in their laps, while 
men are obliged to keep their supply of uppers next to them 
and have to make an extra motion of the arm to pick them 
up. The output of the machine varies according to the 
spacing of the eyelets. Men's shoes, which have only four 
or five evenly spaced holes, naturally go more quickly than 
women's, which have often as many as 12 holes irregularly 
spaced. An expert worker at the eyeletting machine can 
finish 2000 pairs of ladies' shoes in one day, although this 
amount, like that given above, is probably 20 per cent higher 
than the average worker's output.* Again, the work is 
skilled, extremely swift, and monotonous. The workers do 
not have the opportunity of relaxing the particular kind 
of attention which their machine requires, for each one is a 
specialist in her own fractional field only. It is the acme of 
subdivision. 

Astonishing as are the material results in output, this 
minute division of labor and the unrelieved monotony of work 
which it brings must be counted in any effort to appraise the 
new strain of industry. Not machine workers only, mere 
feeders of larger automata, but hand workers too, suffer from 
the blight of monotony. The girls and women who pack the 
innumerable small objects which must be wrapped before 

* Statement in a letter from a representative of the United Shoe 
Machinery Co., March 4, 1912. 

66 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

they reach the retail stores — such as all sorts of glass objects, 
lamps, crackers, candy, and other food-stuflFs — have an oc- 
cupation of unrelieved monotony. It requires no more judg- 
ment or skill than to feed a machine, only speed and the 
indefinite repetition of dull, mechanical movements. 

3. PHYSIOLOGY OF MONOTONY 
It goes without saying that monotony of work, of which 
these are random examples, cannot be avoided in our in- 
dustries. It is a part of their development, and even when 
ingenious machines are invented to do work previously done 
by hand, the running and feeding of such machines often 
provides only another form of monotonous work for the 
human agent. With subdivision, and the loss of craftman- 
ship, monotony of work in greater or less degree is inevit- 
able, and may well be accepted as such. For when once 
monotony is recognized as a real hardship, and as in itself 
a source of fatigue, rational means of relieving it may be 
sought, in shortening hours of monotonous labor and alter- 
nating work of different kinds. An interesting example 
is given by a German factory inspector of excessive fatigue 
resulting from light, but monotonous, work on corset steels, 
which was relieved by periodical changes of work for the 
employes in question.* Enlightened employers in various 
industries have found such alternations of work practically 
beneficial in stemming fatigue. 

From our physiological point of view, this is entirely 
logical, because the strain of monotony is not due merely to 
the distaste for work and the aversion it engenders. Monot- 
ony of occupation is a true factor in inducing fatigue, because 
it has a true physiological basis, which can briefly be made 
clear. We know that with repetition and sameness of use 
there results continuous fatigue of the muscle or organ used. 
So, too, with the nerve centers from which our motive power 

* Quoted by Dr. Emil Roth. Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. Four- 
teenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Berlin, 1907, 
Vol. II, Sec. IV, p. 614. 

67 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

springs. We must bear in mind that the special functions of 
the brain have separate centers. Thus, there is a center for 
hearing, another for sight, another for speech, etc. When cer- 
tain centers are working continuously, monotonously, from 
morning to night, day by day and week by week, it is physiolog- 
ically inevitable that they should tire more easily than when 
work is sufificiently varied to call upon other centers in turn. 

The monotony of so-called light and easy work may thus 
be more damaging to the organism than heavier work which 
gives some chance for variety, some outlet for our innate re- 
volt against unrelieved repetitions. Monotony often inflicts 
more injury than greater muscular exertion just because 
it requires continuous recurring work from nerve centers, 
fatigue of which, as we have seen, reacts with such disastrous 
consequences upon our total life and health. The evils of 
monotony illustrate again how closely all the functions of our 
life are bound up together; how the physical and nervous 
and psychic parts of us react and interact upon one another. 
Aversion from a monotonous grind of work, the effort of the 
will to " keep up," requires just so much more nervous stim- 
ulus from already tired nerve centers. 

4. NOISE 

In both the needle and textile trades, which we have 
taken as types of work involving speed and complexity, 
fatigue is the more quickly induced by other attendant in- 
fluences which are common to most machine work. One of 
these fatiguing influences is the noise of the machinery. 

The fatiguing effect of the roar of machinery is chiefly 
due to its influence upon the faculty of attention. Mental 
fatigue is "characterized pre-eminently by a weakening of 
the powers of attention.''* Voluntary attention is essentially 
a selective process, a ''focalization and concentration of con- 
sciousness"! upon one thing or a few from among the multi- 

* Lee, op. cit. Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 180. 
t James, William: The Principles of Psychology. Advanced Course, 
p. 426. New York, Henry Holt and Co., 1899. 

68 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

plicities, physical and mental, in whose midst we live. There 
is thus in attention a sensation of effort, and fatigue of at- 
tention is in direct proportion to the continuance of the efforts 
and the difficulty of sustaining them. Now, under the in- 
fluence of loud noise, attention is distracted and the difficulty 
of sustaining it increased. 

The term reaction time, as is well known, is used for the 
minute interval between the occurrence of some external 
phenomenon and the signal of its having been perceived by 
any given individual. This interval is, as a rule, almost 
infinitesimal. It is counted in hundred-thousandths of a 
second, yet individuals differ markedly in the speed of their 
reactions. In laboratory experiments these infinitesimal 
differences are exactly measured by the use of Hipps' chro- 
nometer, a stop watch constructed to mark the thousandth 
part of a second. The laboratory experiments confirm what 
we know from everyday life, that attention increases, and 
fatigue of attention decreases, our promptitude of reaction. 
Thus in a game of tennis, for instance, or in any sport where 
the reaction must be instant, we fail to make prompt returns 
as soon as attention is in any way distracted and we are off 
guard. Measured by the chronometer, most people take 
about 134 thousandths of a second before responding with 
the hand to a touch on the foot, but fatigue of the attention 
may double the length of this reaction, prolonging the in- 
terval to as much as 250 thousandths of a second. 

Now, further laboratory study shows how noise, like 
fatigue, retards the time of reaction. Mosso quotes* an 
experiment which showed that when an organ was played, 
reaction time was increased from 100 thousandths of a second 
to 144 thousandths, before the subject of the experiment 
showed that he felt a touch upon his left hand. This retar- 
dation took place in spite of a greater intensity of atten- 
tion, and whenever the disturbing sound ceased, the time 
of physiological reaction became as before. James quotes 
more careful, detailed studies of Wundt which disclose the 

* Mosso, Angelo: La Fatica. English translation, pp. 204 and 205. 

69 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

same kind of retardation in reaction through the influence of 
disturbing noise.* 

* James, William, op. cit., pp. 427-432. 

"Under this head, the shortening of reaction-time, there is a good deal 
to be said of attention's effects. Since Wundt has probably worked over 
the subject more thoroughly than any other investigator and made it pecu- 
liarly his own, what follows had better, as far as possible, be in his words. 

' I made experiments in which the principal impression, or signal for 
reaction, was a bell-stroke whose strength could be graduated by a spring 
against the hammer with a movable counterpoise. Each set of observations 
comprised two series, in one of which the bell-stroke was registered in the 
ordinary way, whilst in the other a toothed wheel belonging to the chrono- 
metric apparatus made during the entire experiment a steady noise against 
a metal spring. In one-half of the latter series (.A.) the bell-stroke was only 
moderately strong, so that the accompanying noise diminished it consider- 
ably, without, however, making it indistinguishable. In the other half (B) 
the bell-sound was so loud as to be heard with perfect distinctness above 
the noise. 



Mean 



Maximum 



Minimum 



No. of Ex- 
periments 



A 
(Bell-stroke 
moderate) 

B 

(Bell-stroke 
loud) 



{Without noise 
With noise 

{Without noise 
With noise. . . . 



0.189 
0.313 
0.158 
0.203 



0.244 
0.499 
0.206 
0.295 



0.156 
0.183 
0.133 
0.140 



21 
16 
20 
19 



'Since, in these experiments, the sound B even with noise made a 
considerably stronger impression than the sound A without, we must see 
in the figures a direct influence of the disturbing noise on the process of 
reaction. This influence is freed from mixture with other factors when the 
momentary stimulus and the concomitant disturbance appeal to different 
senses. I chose, to test this, sight and hearing. The momentary signal was 
an induction-spark leaping from one platinum point to another against a 
dark background. The steady stimulation was the noise above described. 











No. of 


Spark 


Mean 


Maximum 


Minimum 


Experiments 


ithout noise. . 


..0.222 


0.284 


0.158 


20 


ith noise 


..0.300 


0.390 


0.250 


18 



'When one reflects that in the experiments with one and the same 
sense the relative intensity of the signal is always depressed (which by itself 
is a retarding condition) the amount of retardation in these last observations 
makes it probable that the disturbing influence upon attention is greater when 
the stimuli are disparate than when they belong to the same sense. One does 
not, in fact, find it particularly hard to register immediately, when the bell 
rings in the midst of the noise; but when the spark is the signal one has 
the feeling of being coerced, as one turns away from the noise towards it.' " 
(Wundt. Physiol. Psych., 2nd ed. II, pp. 241-5.) 

70 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

Thus, noise not only distracts attention but necessitates 
a greater exertion of intensity or conscious application, 
thereby hastening the onset of fatigue of the attention. A 
quite uncounted strain upon this easily fatigued faculty re- 
sults among industrial workers, such as girl machine opera- 
tors, when the deafening intermittent roar of highly speeded 
machinery adds its quota to the tax of a long day's work. 
The roar is not even continuous enough to sink into monot- 
ony. With each stoppage and starting of a machine, it 
bursts out irregularly. 

The subject of noise in industrial establishments is 
usually dismissed with the remark that the workers "get 
used to it," and doubtless, in many occupations, the workers 
themselves are scarcely, or not at all, conscious of any in- 
creased application on their part, due to the noise. But, in 
the main, the process of getting used to it involves precisely 
that increased intensity of nervous effort, that "feeling of 
being coerced," of which Wundt speaks in the laboratory 
experiments, and which, as we have seen, is most favorable 
for the approach of exhaustion. 



5. FATIGUE AND INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS 

Fatigue of the attention and lack of muscular control are 
important in another connection hitherto little regarded. It 
has been shown to play a subtle part in the occurrence of 
industrial accidents. The statistics of all countries which 
have recorded the hours at which such injuries occur prove 
that, other things being equal, the accidents increase pro- 
gressively up to a certain time in the morning and again in 
afternoon work. 

In estimating the accidents of working people, we are too 
much accustomed to dwell only upon the concrete objects of 
danger, such as the unguarded machinery, or the prodigious 
size and weight and speed of industry's mechanisms; or the 
atmospheric conditions of work such as intense heat and 
glare, or cold and dark, and the like. But besides all these 

71 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

external factors and their effects, we must reckon with the 
human subject himself, and the reason why, among so many 
ever-present chances of danger, so many are escaped as well 
as succumbed to. 

Here, again, the causes of immunity or the reverse can- 
not easily be isolated. The worker's total makeup, — his 
coolness, his experience, his native quickness of reaction, his 
state of being, physical and mental, taken as a whole, deter- 
mine his chances. Yet we know that even in the healthiest 
organism the products of fatigue accumulate with progressive 
hours of work; we know that our promptitude of reaction 
rises and falls with the freshness of our attention; that noth- 
ing is more potent than fatigue to increase reaction time and 
develop muscular inaccuracies. 

Hence, when we find the number and ratio of accidents 
increasing up to a certain point with each successive hour of 
work during the morning, falling towards zero at the noon 
hour and again rising to a maximum in the afternoon, it is 
reasonable to ascribe the increase in large part to the effects 
of fatigue, direct and indirect. 

In a general way, the increase of accidents late in the 
day has long been known. These "melancholy details" 
were urged as arguments for shortening the workday by Lord 
Shaftesbury and the earliest English reformers.* But it has 
been only within comparatively recent years that any sta- 
tistics on the hours of incidence have become available. The 
data from various states and countries are not in complete 
accord and show various discrepancies. The statistics 
quoted below should be regarded merely as initial studies. 
Yet they are significant, notwithstanding their defects, 
because they reveal tendencies too uniform and consistent 
to be the work of chance. 

The most valuable and complete statistics come from 
Germany, the first country to adopt, in 1884, a comprehen- 
sive system of accident compensation on a national scale. 
Germany was one of the first nations to require that the hours 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. 3rd Series. March 15, 1844. 

72 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

of the incidence of accidents be reported. The Imperial In- 
surance Office has made a practice of publishing, at ten-year 
intervals, special studies of industrial accidents for which 
compensation has been paid to working people under the 
national accident insurance system. Such investigations 
were made for the industrial insurance associations in 1887, 
1897, and 1907. The following table shows that during the 
year 1887 the highest accident rate, for all industries, oc- 
curred between ten and twelve in the morning and between 
five and six in the afternoon.* 



NUMBER AND PER CENT OF ACCIDENTS DURING THE YEAR 1887, 
BY HOUR OF THE DAY (gERMANY) 





Accidents 




Accidents 


Hours 






Hours 








Number 


Per Cent 




Number 


Per Cent 


Morning 






Afternoon 






6 to 7 . . . 


435 


2.82 


12tol... 


587 


3.81 


7 to 8 . . . 


794 


5.16 


1 to 2... 


745 


4.84 


8 to 9... 


815 


5.29 


2 to 3... 


1037 


6.73 


9 to 10 . . . 


1069 


6.94 


3 to 4... 


1243 


8.07 


10 to 11 . . . 


1598 


10.37 


4 to 5... 


1178 


7.65 


11 to 12 . . . 


1590 


10.31 


5 to 6... 


1306 


8.48 



The latest German statistics give the number of hours 
worked by injured persons on the days of their accidents,! 
and show that the accident rate is highest during the fourth 
and fifth hours of morning work.f 

* Quoted from the Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichs-Versicherungs- 
amts, 1890, in the 24th Annual Report of the United States Commissioner 
of Labor, Workmen's Insurance and Compensation Systems in Europe, 
Vol. I, p. 1134. 

t Amtliche Nachrichten des Reichs-Versicherungsamts, 1910. I. 
Beiheft I. Teil. Gewerbe-Unfallstatistik fur das Jahr 1907, pp. 329-335. 
Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor No. 92, Jan., 1911. Harris, 
Henry J., Ph. D.: Industrial Accidents and Loss of Earning Power: Ger- 
many's Experiences in 1897 and 1907, p. 50. 

X See table on next page. It has been suggested that the German 
custom of allowing about 15 minutes for afternoon lunch (Vesperpause) at 4 
o'clock or later is responsible for the decrease beginning with the eighth hour 
of work. See Harris, Henry J., op. cit., p. 49. 

73 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



NUMBER AND PER CENT OF PERSONS INJURED OR KILLED 
DURING THE YEAR 1907, BY NUMBER OF HOURS OF WORK 
ON THE DAY OF THE ACCIDENT (gERMANY) 



Number of Hours 


Injured 
2t IVork 


All Industries, etc. 


Persons had been i 


Number Reported 


Per Cent 


Less than 1 


3,939 
6,885 
7,351 
9,004 
9,739 
8,106 
6,462 
6,908 
6,817 
6,041 
8,539 


4.94 


1 to 2 


8 63 


2 to 3 


9.21 


3 to 4 


11.28 


4 to 5 


12.20 


5 to 6 


10.16 


6 to 7 


8.10 


7 to 8 


8.66 


8 to 9 


8.54 


9 to 10 


7.57 


10 and over 


10.71 






Total 


79,791 


100.00 







In France, too, the distribution by hours, of accidents 
occurring among French workmen, has been studied. Be- 
tween 1904 and 1907, Professor Imbert of the University of 
MontpeHer, in conjunction with French factory inspectors, 
investigated accidents occurring in sundry occupations such 
as the building trades, metal and wood-working trades. 
They also showed graphically the hours of accidents occur- 
ring among 140,407 workers affected during the year 1903 
by the French accident compen^tion law.* In all these 
studies the general features of the curves were the same. 
The summit was reached between 10 and 11 a. m. and 
again between 4 and 5 p. m. 

Similar studies showing similar results were published in 
1907, by the Belgian factory inspectors! ^nd by two Italian 

* Revue Scientifique, 4e Juin, 1904. Ibid., 24e Septembre, 1904. Ibid., 
21eOctobre, 1905. Bulletin de ['Inspection du Travail Fasc. 3^. Paris, 1906. 

t Royaume de Belgique. Rapports Annuels de I' Inspection du Tra- 
vail, 1907, p. 206. 

74 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 



physicians who investigated more than 5,000 accidents 
occurring in machine shops of Itahan railroads during a 
period of four years.* 

So far as concerns the United States the study of work 
injuries has been so much belated that the significance of their 
times of incidence has not been noted until very recently. As 
late as the year 1909 the writer was unable to learn of any 
American investigations into this subject. Since then sev- 
eral have appeared. In its report for the year 1909-10, 
the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor published a brief table of 
accidents, according to their distribution by hours. f 

Some unpublished accident statistics of the Illinois 
State Department of Factory Inspection for the year 1910 

NUMBER OF ACCIDENTS DURING THE YEAR 1910, BY HOUR OF 
THE DAY (ILLINOIS) 



Morning 


Accidents 


Afternoon 


Accidents 


7 to 7 :59 


79 


Itol :59 


111 


8 to 8:59 


120 


2 to 2 : 59 


156 


9 to 9:59 


193 


3 to 3 : 59 


227 


10 to 10: 59 


246 


4 to 4: 59 


260 


11 toll : 59 


257 


5 to 5 : 59 


145 


12 to 12 : 59 


49 


Other hours 


289 



were quoted in a recent study of industrial accidents in the 
American Journal of Sociology. % The author states that of 
the accident reports examined, 2,687 gave a fairly accurate 
description of what had happened preceding the accidents, 
and of these, 2,203 or 82.2 per cent " conceivably might have 
been avoided if the injured, or the fellow servant who was the 

* // Ramaizini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno. I. 
Fasc. 10-11. Oct., 1907. Pieraccini, Prof. G., and Maffei, Dr. R. (R. 
Arcispedale di S. M. Nuova, Firenze): Le stagioni, i giorni, le ore nel deter- 
minismo degli infortuni del lavoro. 

t 14th Biennial Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Indus- 
trial Statistics. 1909-1910. Part II, p. 78. 

t Bogardus, Emery S.: The Relation of Fatigue to Industrial Acci- 
dents. American Journal of Sociology, University of Chicago Press. Volume 
XVII, Nos. 2, 3, and 4. (September and November, 1911, and January, 
1912.) 

75 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 
NUMBER AND PER CENT OF ACCIDENTS BY HOUR OF THE DAY 

(United States — Some Comparative Statistics) 







Cotton Mills 




Metal- WORKS 


Hours 


126 Mills 1 Year 


1 Mill 8 Years 


Total 




No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


6 to 7 a. m 

7.01 to 8 a. m 

8.01 to 9 a. m 

9.01 to 10 a. m 

10.01 to 11 a. m 

11.01 to 12 m 

12.01 to Ip. m 

1.01 to 2p. m 

2.01 to 3 p. m 

3.01 to 4 p. m 

4.01 to 5 p. m 

5.01 to 6 p. m 

6.01 to 7p. m 

7.01 to 8p. m 


73 

95 

126 

161 

128 
78 

58 

78 

98 

126 

90 
59 

7 
3 


6.19 

8.05 

10.68 

13,64 

10.85 

6.61 

4.92 

6.61 

8.30 

10.68 

7.63 

5.00 

.59 

.25 


63 
68 
82 
90 
114 
43 

9 

63 
67 
77 

57 
2>2, 


8.22 

8.88 

10.71 

11.75 

14.88 

5.61 

1.18 

8.22 
8.75 
10.05 
7.44 
4.31 


486 
677 
860 
763 
491 

241 

602 
676 
716 

511 
203 


7^81 
10.87 
13.81 

12.25 
7.89 

3.87 

9.67 
10.86 
11.50 

8.21 
3.26 


Total 


1,180 


100.00 


766 


100.00 


6,226 


100.00 









General Manufacture 


Grand Total 


Hours 


Indiana 3 Years 


Wisconsin 






No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


No. ac- 
cidents 


Per cent 


6 to 7 a. m 

7.01 to 8 a. m 

8.01 to 9 a. m 

9.01 to 10 a. m 

10.01 to 11 a. m 

11.01 tol2 m 

12.01 to 1 p. m 

1.01 to 2 p. m 

2.01 to 3 p. m 

3.01 to 4 p. m 

4.01 to 5 p. m 

5.01 to 6 p. m 

6.01 to 7 p. m 

7.01 to 8 p. m 


546 
492 
603 

469 

338 

183 

441 
481 
598 
480 
197 


11.31 

10.19 

12.49 

9.71 

7.00 

3.79 

9.13 

9.97 

12.38 

9.95 

4.08 


"76 
126 

227 
245 

208 

49 

126 
213 
240 

229 
151 


4.02 

6.67 

12.01 

12.96 

11.00 

2.59 

6.67 
11.27 
12.70 
12.12 

7.99 


136 
1,271 
1,503 
1.941 
1,719 
1,158 

540 

1,310 
1,535 
1.757 

1,367 

643 

7 

3 


0.91 

8.53 

10.09 

13.04 

11.54 

7.78 

3.63 

8.80 
10.31 
11.80 

9.18 

4.32 

.05 

.02 


Total 


4,828 


100.00 


1,890 


100.00 


14,890 


100.00 







76 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

cause of the accident in some cases, had had accurate muscu- 
lar control/' Of the 2,203 accidents which might have been 
avoided, the time was given at which 2,162 had occurred, and 
again showed the summit of the accident curve between 10 
and 12 o'clock in the morning and 4 and 5 in the afternoon. 

The federal investigation of wage-earning women and 
children includes a study of accidents among about 14,000 
metal workers, male and female, and more than 75,000 cotton 
mill workers. For purposes of comparison it includes the 
Wisconsin table and some unpublished statistics from the 
Indiana Bureau of Factory Inspection. "Here," says the 
report,* " are four sets of figures, collected by different agencies 
in different parts of the Union at different times and covering 
different industries, each agency working independently of 
the others. Yet the figures thus gathered show . , . strik- 
ing similarity." Omitting the hour from 6 to 7 a. m., the 
accident rate is shown to be highest during the third and 
fourth hours of work. 

Such, in brief, is the testimony of the statistics. It is 
true that most of these studies of accidents are open to various 
criticisms. They are not sufficiently full and specific to be 
scientifically accurate. They do not state the actual number 
of workers employed at each hour of the day. More workers 
are employed at some hours than at others; hence the in- 
creased number of accidents during the third and fourth hours 
of the morning or afternoon may be due to the presence of a 
larger working force. In that case the number of accidents 
would necessarily be heightened. 

The question has also been raised why, if fatigue is a 
primary cause for these accidents, their number is not great- 
est during the last hour of the morning and of the afternoon? 
If it is the workers' exhaustion which inclines them to these 
hazards, why does it not do so most when they are presum- 
ably most fatigued? 

* Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, Second Session, 1911. 
Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United 
States, Vol. XI, pp. 96-97. See table on p. 76. 

77 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

To this objection there are several conclusive replies. 
In the first place, the variation in the lunch hour in different 
establishments lessens the number of persons at work between 
eleven and one o'clock.* So, also, variations in "quitting 
time'' and the smaller number of persons at work between 
five and six, go toward explaining the usually smaller num- 
ber of accidents which occur at that time. Moreover, some 
familiar psychological phenomena help further to explain 
the smaller number of accidents during the first and last 
hours of morning and afternoon employment. It is well 
known that the first period of work is one of "limbering up," 
when the worker has not yet reached his normal plane of 
efficiency or production. During the last hour of work, also, 
with increasing fatigue, the rate naturally falls. In a sub- 
sequent chapter we shall observe, from actual experiments, 
how markedly the productivity and output drop during the 
last hours of the morning and afternoon. 

Now this lower rate of activity, due to complex causes, 
is in all probability a highly important factor in the reduced 
accident rate during the first and last hours of the morning 
and afternoon. It is well known that operations requiring 
increased speed tend to produce a heightened accident rate, 
and the reverse is as true. With the slackening of speed and 
production, therefore, it is natural for the accident rate to 
fall. Thus the effects of fatigue upon the accident rate are 
both direct and indirect. As the American report acutely 
saysif 

"It is evident that in the interrelation of influences 
acting upon the situation now one and now another may be 
dominant. The most constant factor will be fatigue. It 
will be present in varying proportion in every case. It 
may act with the tendency to increase speed to produce 

* "In one Chicago plant employing about 3,000 men and women, the 
writer found that practically one-half of this number took their lunch from 
11 :30 to 12. Frequently the employees begin their afternoon period of 
work at 12 :45 p. m, and in some cities at 12 :30 p. m." — Bogardus, op. 
cit., p. 513. 

t Senate Document No. 645, Vol. XI, p. 100. 

78 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

a greater number of accidents. It may in the end become 
so pronounced that speed is reduced and the accident rate 
lowered. . . . It is a steadily progressive process. It 
gradually upsets those nice adjustments of the living or- 
ganism upon which depend efficient labor and the safety of 
the worker. The margin of safety in modern industry is 
small. It is measured too frequently by fractions of an inch. 
Reduce the alertness and the exactness with which the body 
responds to the necessities of labor, and by just ^o much have 
you increased the liability that the hand will be misplaced 
that fraction which means mutilation.'' 

Obviously these statistics and surmises as to the relation 
of fatigue to the accident rate urgently need further confirma- 
tion. They do not completely agree and need to be clari- 
fied by a really scientific examination of both the production 
rate and the accident rate in the same establishments. In 
order to clarify the influence of fatigue on the accident rate, 
the number of hours worked by injured persons on the days 
of their injuries should obviously be included in all future 
statistics, besides the actual hours of incidence. 

Side by side with the perfection of mechanisms and 
safety appliances should go the study of those underlying 
physiological and psychological factors which so largely con- 
tribute to swell the accident rate and which may, when better 
studied and understood, be modified if not obliterated by the 
provision of periodic rests or pauses, and similar devices to 
check the inroads of fatigue and exhaustion. 

6. RHYTHM 

The strain of machine work upon the faculty of atten^ 
tion thus leads to the gravest consequences. Another subtly 
fatiguing element in machine work, which we have not yet 
examined, is due to its rhythm. It is apparent that the 
rhythm of any power-driven machinery is fixed and mechan- 
ical, depending upon its construction and its rate of speed. 
Now it is true also that human beings tend to work rhyth- 
mically, and when the individual's natural swing or rhythmic 

79 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

tendency must be wholly subordinated to the machine's 
more rapid mechanical rhythm, fatigue is likely to ensue. 

Rhythm in human beings is not a fanciful or theoretic 
notion; it is a common endowment. The human organism 
instinctively attunes itself to rhythm, as a dancer yields her- 
self to her measure, without thought or even consciousness. 
This is a matter of everyday experience. Some persons are 
palpably disturbed by the sudden stopping of a clock to the 
ticking of which they have been accustomed. The rhythm 
of the tick may be missed even in sleep; its sudden cessation 
is sufficient to awaken one when a bedroom clock runs down 
at night. Everyone knows how acutely the rhythm of a 
train or vessel may be missed, when one first sets foot on 
solid earth after a long journey. 

Since the beginning of time, this natural instinct for 
rhythm has found an outlet in dance and song.* It was the 
mother of the arts. It gave birth to the folksongs and folk- 
dances, in which primitive people expressed themselves — 
their loves and hates, their dreams of life and death, and 
their concrete activities. Not the poetry of existence only, 
but all the daily offices of life — spinning, weaving, sowing 
the grain, harvesting, and the rest — inspired song and dance, 
their own rhythms. 

Even today innumerable survivals persist, marking our 
kinship with the earlier children of men. Sailors and other 
workmen almost unconsciously chant or ''hoy-ho"as they 
haul. In the midst of discordant city traffic, workmen who 
are mending the pavements drive steel wedges with rhyth- 
mic shouts and rhythmic alternating blows of their sledges. 
They know, instinctively, that the rhythm makes the work 
easier. So, too, soldiers march better and with less exertion 
to a tune. It is not only the emotional excitement of a 
martial air, it is the rhythmic beat of the music that helps to 
swing the march along in unison. 

* Biicher, Karl: Arbeit und Rhythmus. Fourth edition. Leipzig, 
Teubner, 1909. 



80 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

"For the world was built in order 
And the atoms march in tune; 
Rhyme the pipe, and Time the warder, 
The sun obeys them and the moon. . . . 
None so backward in the troop. 
When the music and the dance 
Reach his place and circumstance." • 

Even in the animal world, rhythm is natural. The 
rhythm of the trotting horse or the ambling camel is as in- 
dividual to itself as the beat of the blacksmith's, the cobbler's 
or the carpenter's hammer, or the swing of the housemaid's 
broom. With a musical people, such as the American Negro, 
not only rhythmic movements but rhythmic songs persist 
among such diverse workers as cotton-pickers in Georgia, 
laborers laying railroad and trolley rails in Kentucky, and 
the roustabouts on the Mississippi.* 

The reason why rhythm makes work easier as well as 
more enjoyable is that in any given tempo, each effort is 
followed by a corresponding rest. There is a perfect balance 
of swing and recovery, rise and fall, exertion and repose — 
" primal chimes " as Emerson, the lover of rhythm, calls them : 

"Primal chimes of sun and shade, 
Of sound and echo, man and maid; ... 
For Nature beats in perfect tune. 
And rounds with rhyme her every rune." 

If such a balance could be permanently established in 
work, fatigue could never occur. Such a condition exists in 
the physiological rhythm of the heart and respiratory muscles, 
which function unceasingly through life, alternating work 
and rest, work and rest. In its steady rhythmic tempo the 
heart relaxes at each contraction, exerting energy estimated 
at about 20,000 kilogrammeters in one day.f 

Thus are we physiologically attuned to rhythm. It is 
our common heritage. The injury of highly speeded machine 
work lies, as we have said, in this, that the mechanical, rapid 

* Biicher, op. cit., pp. 235-251. 

t Roth, Dr. Emil: Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. Op. cit., p. 606. 
Kilogrammeter=7.2 foot pounds. For definition of foot pound see p. 195. 

6 8l 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

rhythm of machinery dominates the human agent, whatever 
be his natural rate or rhythmic tendency. The machine 
sets the tempo; the worker must keep to it. 

Not only is the beat of the machine much more rapid 
and regular than the more elastic human rhythms; it is often 
wholly lost in the chaos of different rhythms of the various 
machines, belts, and pulleys in one workroom. The roar and 
vibration of machinery tends further to distract any sense 
of rhythm on the part of the workers. 



7. PIECE-WORK 

Another enemy of the physiological tempo lies in the 
abuse of the piece-work system. Here we must preface our 
physiological objections to the abuse of a system, by realizing 
the inherent value of the system itself, properly managed. 
Briefly, piece-work presupposes a naturally varying rate of 
work and output among individuals, according to which each 
worker is paid. Obviously, this should be the most just way 
to allow for the play of natural talents. Increased effort or 
skill brings its immediate reward, and the best worker is the 
best paid. In highly organized trades, where the piece-work 
system has been minutely worked out, as in the great shoe 
industry, neither workers nor employers would for a moment 
consider returning to a time basis, where individuals are paid 
alike by the hour. 

In criticising the piece-rates, therefore, we are dealing 
with an entrenched practice, and criticism must attack not 
the system, but its flagrant abuses. These, unfortunately, 
are common and widespread, especially among workingwomen 
in poorly organized trades, where no collective bargaining 
protects individuals from pressure. In such occupations, of 
which the ramified needle and clothing trades are the best 
examples, piece-work develops chiefly into a system of " speed- 
ing up" the workers in both machine and hand work. The 
workers are spurred to a feverish intensity. They apply 
themselves hectically. It is almost inevitable that the most 

82 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

rapid workers should be so-called "pace-makers'* and set the 
rhythm for all the other workers. For pay is usually ad- 
justed to the rate of the quickest workers, and in order to earn 
a fair wage, all the others must keep up as near to them as 
possible. Thus, if a quick girl can stitch ten dozen pieces of 
white underwear in a day, she can earn $1.50 at the rate of 
15 cents per dozen. Another girl can at her natural pace 
stitch no more than six dozen in one day. But since she 
would earn only 90 cents a day at the same rate of pay, she 
drives herself feverishly to greater exertion. Piece-work, 
then, means working watch in hand. When every minute 
means loss of an already meager wage, the incentive to spurt 
is irresistible. 

Many employers contend that unless workers have such 
incentives, or a personal stake in working steadily, they tend 
to slacken and are indifferent to the amount of their output 
so long as wages are assured. The workers, on the other 
hand, return that in piece-work, even the utmost speed does 
not assure them of their wages, since the piece-work price is 
often cut when the rapid workers are thought to be earning 
too much in one day. The rate per piece is lowered. Then 
the same speed is required to earn the lower wage.* 

Another hardship in piece-work of which the workers 
justly complain and which adds greatly to the nervous tax of 
any occupation is due to the extraordinarily rapid changes of 
fashion. Thus, for example, just when a girl has become 
proficient enough to earn a fair wage at piece-rates in tucking 
women's shirtwaists, the tucks go out of fashion, and a new 
kind of stitching is required. Even the skilled worker is a 
novice at first, and cannot for some time equal the speed she 
had acquired by practice at her former work. Yet the manu- 
facturer, in fixing piece-rates, rarely makes allowance for such 
sudden freaks of fashion, and the hardship of the inevitable 
changes falls on the one least able to support it, the worker. 

* For a striking example of the abuse of the piece-work system in the 
manufacture of electric lamp bulbs, see Report on Condition of Woman and 
Child Wage-Earners in the United States, Vol. Ill, p. 480. Senate Docu- 
ment No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, 1911. 

83 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Her wage practically is cut and her work intensified by every 
shift of fashion. 

Thus, though the piece-work system is sound in theory 
and works admirably in highly organized trades where col- 
lective agreements assure the workers fair, fixed rates, it 
fails among the most helpless workers who most need to be 
protected from over-pressure and the inroads of fatigue. 
With them it almost inevitably breeds a spirit of permanent 
"rush'' in work, and to that extent it is physiologically 
dangerous: ''the most pernicious thing that could be de- 
vised to weaken what, for a better term, might be de- 
scribed as the dynamic efficiency of the nervous system,"* 
writes a physician familiar with the effects of unregulated 
piece-rates among garment workers. 



8. OVERTIME 

The factors which we selected as typical of the new 
strain in industry are all aggravated and intensified by the 
system of overtime evening work, to which we have already 
made passing reference. Overtime means that after the 
regular day's work is done, evening work is required in 
addition. 

Overtime is an elastic term. In its extremest forms, 
reported in printing and binding establishments, it lengthens 
the workday to twenty-four hours in one stretch. In less 
extreme degree, overtime is worked during the fall months 
until eight or nine or ten o'clock each evening in factories 
which supply the Christmas market; in paper box making; 
in the manufacture of innumerable articles of women's wear — 
from lace collars to Japanese kimonos; in leather and jewelry 
work; in making the cheaper and more lasting candies, and 
in many other occupations. 

Indeed, overtime is common to almost all industries and 

* Schwab, Dr. Sidney I. (Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, 
St. Louis University): Neurasthenia among Garment Workers. American 
Labor Legislation Review, Vol. I, No. 1, p. 27. (January, 1911.) 

84 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

is prevalent in every industrial center, to a degree wholly 
unknown to most persons. No more arresting fact emerges 
from the comprehensive study of wage-earning women and 
children made by the federal government, than the almost 
incredible length and duration of this form of extra employ- 
ment. 

People speak habitually, and labor statistics usually 
treat of, the so-called "normal" hours of labor, dismissing 
overtime as an insignificant and merely occasional side issue. 
Overtime is regarded as a sort of temporary emergency, 
similar to many other of life's stresses which people weather 
without permanent injury, thanks to their reserve strength. 
But, in fact, overtime is an integral part of the workers' lives, 
persisting not only for days at a time but for weeks and 
months; not occasionally lengthening the day's work, but 
during a large part of the year straining health and endurance 
to the utmost. 

Thus, in the recent federal investigation of wage-earning 
women and children, agents of the government reported the 
normal hours of work, in miscellaneous manufactures, as 55>^ 
in New York, 56.4 in Chicago, 53.3 in Philadelphia, 53 in 
Baltimore. But the average duration of overtime of selected 
workers in those cities, during 1907-08, was 17.3 weeks or 
over four months in New York, 13>^ weeks or more than three 
months in Chicago, 16.6 weeks or again over four months in 
Philadelphia, 13 weeks in Baltimore.* In one printing es- 
tablishment in New York City, girls were employed once and 
sometimes twice a week, during a period of sixteen to twenty- 
six weeks, for 16^, 20J4, 22>^, and 24^ continuous hours. f 

These longest days of overtime work are reported in 
New York binderies. But in a special investigation of 
Chicago box factories the weeks of overtime persisted longest. J 

* Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the 
United States, Vol. V, pp. 204, 208, 211, 213. Senate Document No. 
645. 61st Congress, 2nd Session. 1910. 

t Ibid., p. 205. 

t Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor No. 91, Nov., 1910. Working 
Hours of Wage-earning Women in Chicago, pp. 875-880. 

85 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Eleven box factories employing 1010 workers were in- 
vestigated. Their average duration of overtime was fifteen 
weeks in the year; one factory reported overtime extending 
over thirty-seven weeks in the year; that is, more than nine 
months."^ In this case, the so-called "normal" hours were 
worked only three months; the supposedly extra "overtime 
hours'' were worked regularly more than nine months in the 
year, — a redudio ad ahsurdum of the whole matter. Yet this 
is not merely an eccentricity of nomenclature. It is a trick 
of psychology; a not unfair example of our habitual mental 
attitude towards the custom of overtime, accepting the 
shorter hours as normal and habitual, dismissing from mind 
the excessive hours no matter how long they may persist, as 
exceptional, under the head of "overtime.'' 

Obviously, when overtime extends over such hours as 
those quoted here, it shares all the dangers inherent in regu- 
lar night work. Upon these dangers we shall dwell subse- 
quently, in discussing more fully the phenomenon of all night 
work. Here it suffices to draw attention to the fact that be- 
side the dangers to health, there are inevitably moral dangers 
also, potential in all employment of women after dark. 

The return home at late night or early morning hours is 
fraught with the peril of insult if not of attack; association 
with men employes at night, and during the midnight recess 
in establishments running all night long, presents special 
temptation; women who live away from home cannot easily 
return to reputable living places late at night. 

Such hardships are incurred by the worker kept for 
overtime as well as by the all night worker. But physio- 
logically considered, overtime sins against health in a way 
peculiar to itself. It means that the elements which make 
up industrial stress — speed, complexity, monotony, and the 

* In this firm, the normal hours were fifty-nine in one week, the "long 
day" being ten hours; in the busy season (thirty-seven weeks) the "long 
day" was thirteen and one-half hours, and the week was made up as follows: 

"One nine-hour day, three thirteen and one-half-hour days and two 
ten-hour days, making the total number of hours for the six-day week 
sixty-nine and one-half." Op. cit., p. 877. 

86 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

rest — must be endured by an organism which has presumably 
already reached its limits. 

The essential injury of overtime is due to what we have 
seen graphically proved with the ergograph: that effort 
increases with fatigue; that work continued after fatigue 
has set in requires so much more subsequent time for re- 
cuperation. But during a "rush" or overtime season such 
time for recuperation is necessarily lacking. The girl who is 
kept in the great department stores until ten or eleven or 
twelve o'clock at night during one or two frenzied weeks be- 
fore the holiday which heralds the reign of Peace; the girl who 
works at fever heat all evening stitching women's shirtwaists 
in January for the spring trade, is not relieved from the 
necessity of reporting for work at seven or eight o'clock the 
next morning. She comes to work unrepaired, and with each 
day of overtime, accumulated fatigue necessarily grows. 

One of the least known and most straining forms of 
overtime, for which Christmas is responsible, occurs in the 
auditing department of the great stores. One of the largest 
establishments in New York City, typical of the best stores, 
closes its doors to shoppers throughout the winter at six 
o'clock. But the girls who serve behind the counters may 
leave every night at their regular hour though girls upstairs 
in the clerical department are kept until nine o'clock in the 
evening during more than two months, that is, from De- 
cember 1 until February. They usually receive no extra 
pay for the three extra daily hours of work, but have an 
allowance of 35 cents each evening for supper money. 

In theory, the requirement of overtime is supposed to be 
balanced by the slack period which often follows. A short 
period of over-exertion is assumed to be compensated by a 
subsequent let-up. But the slack period which often follows 
overtime does not give the supposed opportunity for leisure 
and recuperation. It is itself a season of deprivation. For 
slack work means slack pay, with a consequent loss rather 
than gain in opportunities for recuperation. 

But deeper than this objection to the alternation of 

87 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

overwork and idleness, is the physiological objection. Dur- 
ing overtime, leisure and rest are cut down at the very same 
time that heavier and longer demands are made upon the 
human organism. It is practically inevitable that the meta- 
bolic balance should be thrown out of gear. Regular sea- 
sonal overtime in such occupations as those cited above, 
leaves the worker with too great a physiological deficit. 
There is no rebound, or an infinitely slow one when our 
elastic capacities have been too tensely stretched. It takes 
much more time, rest, repair than the working girl can possibly 
aflFord to make good such metabolic losses. Compensation 
— off-time — comes too late. As we know instinctively, and 
as we have seen diagrammatically proved in the laboratory, 
the essential thing in rest is the time at which it comes. Rest 
postponed is rest more-than-proportionally deprived of 
virtue. Fatigue let run is a debt to be paid at compound 
interest. Maggiora showed that after a doubled task, 
muscle requires not double but four times as long a rest for 
recuperation, and a similar need for more-than-proportionally 
increased rest after excessive work is true also of our other 
tissues, and of our organism in its totality. 

No one need therefore be surprised to learn that after a 
period of overtime work, a marked growth of many minor 
ailments has been found where there has been medical ex- 
amination of working girls and women. A recent report of 
the British Chief Inspector of Factories quotes a striking 
example of this.* In six large tobacco factories, physicians 
appointed by the firms reported an increase of from one- 
third to one-half in the number of workers coming to them 
for treatment after continuous overtime work. No special 
diseases were found but, as might be expected, aggravated 
cases of the ordinary ailments, such as indigestion, anaemia, 
heavy colds in winter, gastric disorders in summer. This 
was in a trade considered not in itself unhealthy by the 
physicians quoted, and where overtime was limited by the 

* British Sessional Papers, Vol. X, Appendix II. 1907, pp. 253-254. 



THE NEW STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

British law so that the total amount of work done could not 
exceed ten and one-half hours in one day. 

This is only one example of many which might be quoted. 
Year after year the British factory inspectors have registered 
their disapproval of overtime on physical grounds, and have 
denounced its physical effects. "Nothing short of a public 
scandal/' "inexcusable," "outrageous,'' are some of the epi- 
thets repeatedly used. In France, the "veillee" or evening 
overtime work, especially in dressmaking establishments, 
comes in for the same denunciation. A German physician. 
Dr. Emil Roth, of Potsdam, expresses himself similarly in 
an address which combines scientific thoroughness with a 
first hand knowledge of industry. His observation inclines 
him to believe that the strain of seasonal overwork upon the 
health of working women in stores and factories is never com- 
pensated, but encroaches steadily upon the worker's total 
health and endurance, permanently lowering their levels.* 

* Roth, Dr. Emil: Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. Op. cit., p. 610. 






89 



IV 

SOME SPECIFIC STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVER- 
STRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

THUS a rapid glance at some actual conditions in 
diverse occupations such as the telephone service, 
the great woman-employing needle and textile and 
shoe trades, and the canneries, throws some light upon the 
new strain of industry. In all these occupations work has 
increased its demands upon human energies. We turn next 
to learn some of the physical effects upon the workers, so 
far as these have been observed and recorded. 

As concerns the past, we have abundant testimony on 
the fruits of overwork, not only regarding those who have 
themselves been bound to exacting tasks, but regarding their 
children and the communities in which their lives were spent. 
This kind of testimony, to which we shall often have occasion 
to refer in this study, is found in the accumulated official 
and unofficial reports of the inspectors and physicians who 
have had daily to observe the conditions of labor at first 
hand, and whose unconscious unanimity gives to their evi- 
dence, as we have pointed out, a strangely heightened power. 
The individual observer may exaggerate or minimize or 
strain the facts. But no one can read without a deep sense 
of its total truth, the reiterated evidence of generations of 
such observers, in many countries, writing independently 
but agreeing fundamentally in their observations and diag- 
noses.* 

There is a peculiar significance in this kind of testimony. 
It is the accumulated experience of mankind and has an 
authority due to its very iterations. This is the power and 

* See Part II of this volume. 
90 



-^^-Ui/^ 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

the moving appeal of history, that it gives us, as fiction rarely 
can, precisely the cumulative experiences, the persistent re- 
alities of our common lot. A truth that has been a hundred 
years in the forging is, in so far forth, just so much the truer. 
It is not a mathematical formula, proved once for all and 
immutable. The truths of history gain in meaning and power 
under changed guises, coming down to the children of a later 
age with a fuller and more significant content. This is as 
true of industrial history as of any other; and hence the in- 
dustrial experience of the past should enable us more in- 
telligently to estimate our own difficulties and performances. 



1. INFANT MORTALITY 

According to the testimony of many observers, the 
industrial overstrain of women has commonly reacted in ~^k^^ 
three visible ways: in a heightened infant mortality, a ^^^'' 
lowered birth rate, and an impaired second generation. We ^^^jj Jr-U^-, 
can readily see that many factors besides overwork contribute ' 

to the greater mortality of infants among the working class. 
Probably improper feeding holds the first place amongst 
causes, and overcrowding, with all its train of ills such as 
foul air, dirt, and darkness, is an important item. But the 
relation, direct and indirect, between women's industrial work 
and a high death rate among infants is well-established. 
Few exact and detailed studies of this relationship have 
been made in our country, but it has been pointed out 
that infant mortality is highest in industrial communities 
where mainly women are employed in factories. Thus an 
abnormally high death rate of infants is asserted to exist in 
two cotton mill towns of New England, — Fall River, Massa- 
chusetts, and Biddeford, Maine.* 

The latest government statistics also show the abnormally 
high infant mortality in textile towns. In 1910, in selected 

* Prevention of Infant Mortality. Being the papers and discussions 
of a Conference on Prevention of Infant Mortality, New Haven, Conn., 
1909, p. 37. Under the Auspices of the American Academy of Medicine. 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

cities, the number of deaths of infants under one year, per 
100 deaths at all ages, was as follows:* 

Boston 19 

Chicago 21 

New York City 21 

Biddeford 27 

Lowell 29 

Lawrence 35 

Holyoke 35 

Fall River 39 

In 1910 the number of deaths of infants under one year, 
per 1000 births, in selected cities was as follows:! 

New York City 125 

Boston 126 

Philadelphia 138 

Lawrence 167 

New Bedford 177 

Holyoke 213 

Lowell 231 

More detailed studies abroad have sought to show 
the relation between a high mortality of young children and 
the industrial employment of women. The death rate of 
infants is said to increase in proportion to the increase 
in the number of women at work. Dr. Newman in his 
standard workt devotes material attention to this subject 
as it affects the death rate in Great Britain. He compares 
eight towns chosen for their low percentage of women at 
work and eight towns chosen for their high percentage of 
women engaged in the textile trades, between the ages of 
fifteen and thirty-five years, that is, during the ages of re- 
productive potentiality. 

In the non-textile towns, the average yearly infant mor- 
tality during the decennium, 1896 to 1905, was 150 per 1,000 
infants. 

* Bureau of the Census. Department of Commerce and Labor, 
Bulletin 109. Mortality Statistics, 1910, p. 14. Washington, 1912. 

fibid., p. 18. 

i Newman, George, M.D. (Lecturer on Public Health at St. Bartholo- 
mew's Hospital, London ; Medical Officer of Health of Metropolitan Borough 
of Finsbury): infant Mortality, p. 105. New York, E. P. Dutton and 
Co., 1907. 

92 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

AVERAGE INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN SOME ENGLISH NON- 
TEXTILE TOWNS, 1896-1905 



Town 


Infant Mortality 
Rate, 1896-1905 


Percentage of Occupied 
Women, ages 15 to 35. 




Total 


Married or iVidowed 


Sunderland 


166 
160 
157 
155 
153 
147 
144 
119 


55.1 
59.4 
63.3 
53.8 
63.6 
62.6 
57.9 
60.5 


2.8 


Swansen 


5.0 


Lincoln 


3.2 


South Shields 


3.0 


Newton 

Cardiff 


2.6 

3.8 


Barrow-in-Furness 

Burton 


2.9 
2.0 


Average 


150 


59.5 


3.1 







In the textile towns, on the other hand, the average 
infant mortahty was 182 per 1,000 infants, rising as high as 
208.* 



INFANT MORTALITY RATE IN SOME ENGLISH TEXTILE TOWNS, 

1896-1905 



TowTf 


Infant Mortality 
Rate. 1896-1905 


Percentage of Occupied 
Women, ages 15 to 35 




Total 


Married or JVidowed 


Burnley 


208 
208 
183 
180 
175 
170 
166 
164 


90.9 
84.4 
91.8 
84.6 
87.6 
87.3 
87.4 
88.9 


59 7 


Preston 


50 5 


Blackburn 


63 9 


Nottingham 


27 5 


Leicester 


41 6 


Oldham 


33 4 


Bolton 


24 7 


Bury 


448 






Average 


182 


88.4 


43 2 







^^ 





t^ 



^''^^. 



'/ 



* Newman, op. cit., p. 106. 

93 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

From these tables it appears that the percentage of 
workingwomen between fifteen and thirty-five years in the 
high mortahty textile towns was 28.9 per cent higher than in 
the low mortality towns; the percentage of married working- 
women was 40 per cent more than in the low mortality towns. 

Another careful study extending over twenty years was 
made by the medical officer of health of Kearsley, a Lanca- 
shire town of about 10,000 inhabitants. The death rate of 
Kearsley remained stationary between 1885 and 1904, but 
the infant death rate rose in the same period from 143 to 
229. During the same period the birth rate fell from 39 to 
27 per 1,000. These striking figures are attributed to the 
fact that the town has developed into a manufacturing dis- 
trict of many mills, where large numbers of women are em- 
ployed. 

Again, in Preston, the increase in infant mortality was 
so marked between 1881 and 1900 that a committee was 
appointed to study the matter. While the general death 
rate sank from 24.73 to 20.80, the number of babies who 
died rose from 208 to 236 per 1,000 infants. The committee 
reported* that in its opinion the causes of this increase were 
the employment of women in mills and the consequent en- 
forced neglect of babies at home. 

Dr. Newman sums up the whole matter by saying if 

"It is the employment of women from girlhood all 
through married life, and through the period of child-bearing 
— the continual stress and strain of the work and hours and 
general conditions prevailing in women's labour — that is 
exerting its baneful influence on the individual and on the 
home.'' 

If the death rate of infants is so high where women 
are employed in the protected British textile trade, with 
its ten-hour day and fifty-five and a half hour week en- 

* Report on Health of Preston, 1902, pp. 10-12. (Quoted by Newman, 
p. 136.) 

t Newman, op. cit., p. 136. 

94 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

forced, we may well ask what are likely to be the eflfects of 
the stress and strain of such American industries as we have 
examined above, upon child bearing and infant mortality. 



2. LOW BIRTH RATE 

It is true that women's industrial work probably affects 
the infant death rate less here than abroad owing to the far 
smaller proportion of married women in industry. But a 
point of equal importance is the effect of industrial overstrain 
in lowering the birth rate itself. It is not only the work of 
women after marriage, or just before confinement, which most 
gravely affects childbirth. The pressure of industry has not 
only in innumerable cases marred, but often destroyed al- 
together that immemorial function of women, the center of 
the tenderest associations of our race. Medical authorities 
assert that the strain of continuous standing and overwork 
during girlhood, such as many young women endure in stores 
as well as factories, is responsible for unmistakable pelvic 
and uterine disease and sometimes subsequent sterility after 
marriage. 

The most impressive evidence on this topic was brought 
out in England, in successive efforts to establish by law a 
shorter workday in mercantile establishments. The reports 
of select committees (several of which sat between 1886 
and 1901 and heard the highest medical testimony regard- 
ing the effects of work in stores), dwell insistently upon the 
injuries from the long hours and the continuous standing 
upon the generative organs, in girlhood as well as after 
marriage. 

From among a large number of medical statements we 
may cite one by Dr. Grigg, out-patient physician for the dis- 
eases of women at Westminster Hospital, senior physician to 
the Queen Charlotte Lying-in Hospital, and connected with 
the Victoria Hospital for children. This physician was ques- 
tioned about the injuries of overwork to the health of 
girls and women employed in stores, "shop-girl assistants'' 

95 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

as they are called in England. He said of the prolonged 
hours :* 

"They have a very grave effect upon the generative 
organs of women, entailing a great deal of suffering, and also 
injuring a very large body of them permanently, setting up 
inflammation in the pelvis in connection with these organs. 

" If the matter could be gone into carefully, I think the 
Committee would be perfectly surprised to fmd what a large 
number of these women are rendered sterile in consequence 
of these prolonged hours. 

*' I think it must be acknowledged sterility is often due 
to this inflammatory mischief arising around the generative 
organs. I believe that it is one of the greatest evils attached 
to these prolonged hours. I have seen many cases in families 
where certain members who have pursued the calling of 
shop-girl assistants have been sterile, while other members 
of the family have borne children. 1 know of one case where 
four members of a family who were shop girls were sterile 
and two other girls, not shop girls, have borne children; 
and I have known other cases in which this has occurred. 
. . . I have patients come to me from all parts of London. 
It appears to be a most common condition." 

Not only do the children of mothers at work or over- 
strained during girlhood die in greater numbers, but the birth 
rate is lower. The most detailed studies on this subject ap- 
pear to have been made by Professor Ugo Broggi, who has 
published extensive figures on the fecundity of working women . 
He states t that of 172,365 Italian working women between 
the ages of fifteen and fifty-four, who were employed in 
industrial occupations, the average child-bearing co-efficient 
was only 45 per thousand or about one-third of the general 
fertility of Italian women (120 per thousand). 

* British Sessional Papers, Vol. XII, 1895. Report of Select Com- 
mittee on Shops (Early Closing Bill), pp. 219-220. Witness, Dr.^W-^Ghap- 
man Grigg. 

See also Part II of this volume, pp. 135-142. 

t Zeitschrift der Socialen Wissenschaft, Bd. VIII, Nr. 10, 1905. Die 
Fruchtbarkeit der selbstarbeitenden und den arbeitenden Standen ange- 
horigen Frauen, p. 663. 

96 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 



3. RACE DEGENERATION 

Besides a high death rate and a low birth rate, sub- 
normahties of size and weight often characterize the children 
born of working mothers. Thus are they handicapped at 
the Start and the misfortunes of the parents are visited upon 
the next generation. 

Such racial deterioration, due to the extremest over- 
work, was unmistakably evident in England after the first 
period of unchecked industrial exploitation. Between 1830 
and 1840 the intolerable overwork of two generations achieved 
its result. The accounts of eye-witnesses, horrified by the 
appearance of the factory population, agree that there was a 
visible decline in the stature and strength as well as in the 
morals of the manufacturing shires. 

"The factory population appear to have become a dis- 
tinct race, that was known at a glance, so defined had the 
effects of overwork and unhealthy dwellings become upon 
the physical appearance and condition of the people."* 

" Competition far from regulation had in half a century 
produced a race of pale, stunted, and emaciated creatures, 
irregular in their lives and dissolute in their habits. Their 
case appeared so desperate that for those who believed in 
laissei /aire, 'the only hope,' as Harriet Martineau con- 
fessed, ' seems to be that the race will die out in two or three 
generations.' "t 

Home life was totally lost; young children, girls, and 
women were all pressed into the service; the very preserva- 
tion of the race was threatened. 

In more recent times, the existence of racial deteriora- 
tion, due in large part to overwork and exhaustion, has been 
interestingly corroborated by the statistics of military ser- 
vice. In various countries, especially where such service is 
compulsory, it has been found that the proportion of young 

* British Sessional Papers, 1875, Vol. XVI, p. 23. 
See also Part 1 1 of this volume, pp. 276-286. 

t The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. p. 
46. London, Grant Richards, 1901. 

7 97 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

men rejected for physical unfitness is far higher in industrial 
communities than in others. 

The great physiologist Mosso drew attention to this 
fact regarding the exploited carusi or sulphur workers of 
Sicily. He had been sent to the island as a young army 
surgeon, and he first realized there, with a shock of horror, 
the "ruin which the exhaustion of fatigue brings about in 
man" when he saw the evidences of his countrymen's de- 
generation in the province of Caltanisetta, in the midst of the 
loveliest natural scenery in the world. Such was the physical 
condition of these people that in the four years between 1881 
and 1884, out of 3,672 sulphur workers who presented them- 
selves at the recruiting offices, only 203 were declared fit for 
service.* 

At about the same time, in 1886, Dr. Schuler, the emi- 
nent Swiss factory inspector, reported f to a congress of 
German scientists and physicians at Strassburg, that the 
factory work of young persons in Switzerland was attracting 
marked attention owing to the shocking statistics of recruiting 
offices. Dr. Schuler stated that in rural districts, where 
there were few mills, only 14.3 per cent to 18.9 per cent of the 
recruits were found unfit for immediate service and were 
temporarily rejected (that is, had their terms of service post- 
poned for two years). In factory districts, 19.7 to 23.3 per 
cent of the young men were found unfit for service and were 
temporarily rejected. It had been assumed that the higher 
standard of living obtained through the increased wages of 
factory workers would compensate for the hardships of 
factory life. But these expectations were not fulfilled. 
Later investigations showed that in the canton of Zug, for 
instance, only 37 per cent of cotton mill operatives were 
physically fit for service, while in the same canton among farm 
laborers 49 per cent were fit, and among artisans from 47 

* Mosso, op. cit. English translation, pp. 158-159. 

t Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fiir offentliche Gesundheitspflege, 
Vol. XVlil, 1880, pp. 134-135. 58. Kongress der Deutschen Naturforscher 
und Arzte. Schuler, Dr. F.: Die tjberburdung der Arbeiterinnen und 
Kinder in Fabriken. 

98 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

to S3 per cent were fit. In another canton, Thurgau, 34 
to 39 per cent of factory workers were rejected as against 
12 to 23 per cent of non-factory workers. 

A more recent study of German workingmen gives 
similar figures. It is stated by a German physician,* on 
the authority of a local magistrate who had long been study- 
ing the subject, that in a district where the manufacturing 
of nails had long been carried on, only 26 per cent of the 
workers liable for military service had been found physically 
fit. In another district, where buckles were extensively 
manufactured, only 21 per cent of the young men were fit. 
These very unfavorable figures are said to be due to long 
hours and great monotony of work requiring the constant 
repetition of mechanical movements. "The avoidance of 
such dangers to the future defense of the country,'' says Dr. 
Ascher, ''lies in shorter hours of work, and exercise as a 
preventive of some of these physical defects." 

The report of the French factory inspectors in 1900 on 
the question of night work also dwells upon the physical 
deterioration observed at the recruiting offices. They state 
that in industrial centers the proportion of rejections on 
account of physical unfitness has been as high as 50 per cent 
while in the country it is only about 25 per cent.f 

Doubtless many incidents of city life such as overcrowd- 
ing and unsanitary housing help to swell the numbers of 

* Handbuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. 
Bd. I. Ascher, Dr.: Beschadigungen der Arbeiter bei der Arbeit, p. 494. 
Stuttgart, Enke, 1902. 

t Rapports presentes a M. le Ministre de Commerce, de 1' Industrie, 
des Postes et des Telegraphes, par les inspecteurs du Travail. La Question 
de r Interdiction du Travail de Nuit, p. 73. Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 
1900. 

See also, Report of the Eighth International Congress of Hygiene 
and Demography, Vol. VII, Section VII, Budapest, 1894. Donath, Dr. 
Julius (Univ. of Budapest): Der Physische Riickgang der Bevolkerung in 
den Modernen Culturstaaten, mit besonderer Riicksicht auf Oesterreich- 
Ungarn. 

Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Paris, 
1900. Vaillant, M. Edouard, (M. R. C. S. England): Legislation et Regie- 
mentation du Travail au point de Vue de I'Hygiene. 

British Sessional Papers, 1904, Vol. XXXII. Report of the Inter- 
Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, Vols. I, II, and III. 

99 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

physically degenerate workingmen disclosed by the military 
statistics. But the most careful students of the subject 
appear to lay chief stress upon the "increasing intensity of 
production and industrial over-pressure'' as the most prom- 
inent cause of physical deterioration among the candidates 
examined. 



4. LACK OF INFORMATION IN THE UNITED STATES 

Our brief survey of some great modern industries has 
shown that they are increasing their demands upon human 
energies. The effect upon the workers is bound to be 
accordingly complicated. What are those effects today? 
Have we reliable evidence on the results of the speed, com- 
plexity, and monotony in industry which we have been con- 
sidering? It is undeniable that there is a baffling lack of 
exact knowledge on this point in the United States. Work- 
ing people who have become ill or worn out at their trades 
do not congregate in resorts or places where they can be 
recognized as victims of overpressure. They are dispersed, 
lost in the masses of our population. When some of them 
emerge, from a longer or shorter struggle for existence, into 
public sight, — seeking employment or aid from relief so- 
cieties, in hospitals or clinics, or more tragically, in the 
criminal courts, — the original cause of their breakdown in 
health and efficiency is often entirely obscure. Even the 
trade unions have, as yet, kept little track of the physical 
condition of their members. On the whole, all that we can 
learn from union workers are individual stories of break- 
down and overstrain. The new interest of the printers in 
the disease which is thinning their ranks, tuberculosis, and 
the results of their short campaign show what a force the 
unions may sometime be in conserving health. But as yet 
they have few exact or constructive data. 

The social settlements and social workers have not much 
more. Something, it is true, we can learn as to the effect 
of industrial strain, from the personal observations of persons 

100 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

who are in friendly relations with their poorer neighbors. 
They see the early age at which the once vigorous immigrant 
father begins to slacken in the race. They see the ill effects 
of youthful overstrain in the feeble offspring of exhausted 
young mothers. They see the revolt from monotonous 
work in the reaction of working children against any re- 
straints.* 

But for statistical or definite proof of the causal connec- 
tion between industrial overstrain and actual illnesses, we 
must turn to other countries, where similar if not the same 
conditions prevail, and where enlightened physicians have 
studied wage-earners who have broken down at work. 

Such medical observation is at best still rare and chaotic. 
But in the records and experiences of the foreign sickness 
insurance societies real light is shed upon the subject. They 
confirm all that we have discussed up to this point. 



5. MEDICAL STUDY OF WORKING PEOPLE IN FOREIGN 
INSURANCE SOCIETIES 

The German workingmen's insurance system, with its 
sickness, accident, invalidity and old age benefits, is too vast 
a subject to be more than touched upon here. A suggestion 
of the opportunities it offers for the study of working people 
and their disabilities may be indicated by a single paragraph. 
According to Dr. Zacher (Leitfaden zur Arbeiterversicherung 
des Deutschen Reiches, 1906) quoted by Professor Hender- 
son,! 

". . . . . At the end of 1905 in all about 70 million 
pensioners (sick, injured, invalids and their dependents) had 
received $1,200,000,000 in benefits. The workmen have 
contributed less than half of the premiums, and have re- 
ceived $480,000,000 more than they have paid out. Prop- 
erty is owned to the amount of $408,000,000, of which 

* Addams, Jane: The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets. New 
York, The Macmillan Co., 1909. 

t Henderson, Charles R.: Summary of European Laws on Industrial 
Insurance. Charities, Dec. 7, 1907, p. 1196. 

lOI 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

almost $120,000,000 have been invested in workmen's 
dwellings, hospitals and convalescent houses, sanitaria, 
baths, and similar institutions of welfare/' 

The sanitaria of the German State Insurance Depart- 
ment were founded for the treatment of insured working 
people who have fallen ill. Obviously, to cure the sick and 
restore their working capacity is more economical as well 
as more humane than to continue merely to pay out insur- 
ance. Accordingly, in 1889, a law was passed authorizing 
insurance societies to invest part of their funds in hospitals 
and sanitaria, to afford the best facilities for speedy recovery, 
and as far as possible to prevent permanent disabilities.* 
The first sanitarium was built in 1894 at Gutergutz for about 
100 chronic male cases. Applications for treatment were so 
numerous that a larger sanitarium for both men and wo- 
men was next erected at Beelitz, near Berlin. 

Aside from the direct benefit to working people from the 
immediate diagnoses of their illnesses and the treatment 
received, the establishment of the sanitaria has been of 
incalculable value in stimulating a new interest in the under- 
lying causes of illness. Hundreds of working people were 
gathered together for treatment. Many were found suffer- 
ing from the same disorders; some diseases were found 

*"0f special interest is the item of medical care. In the five years 
between 1900-1905 the cost of treatment rose from 5,578,300 marks ($1,- 
394,575) to 12,158,800 marks ($3,039,700) and in 1907 the figure reached 
15,186,300 marks ($3,796,575). This is one of the most admirable out- 
growths of the pension system. To avoid having an unnecessarily large 
number of chronic invalids to support, the insurance system has developed 
a great preventive and restorative movement. . . . 

"Thousands of cases are treated each year and a large percentage 
of those who ordinarily would have become permanent public charges are 
either fully restored to strength, or at any rate enabled to do something 
towards their own support. There is at present great enthusiasm for this 
system, and the ailing are only too eager to take advantage of the opportu- 
nities offered them, as it puts at their disposal medical treatment, rest, food, 
shelter, clothing, sanitary surroundings and care which otherwise would 
be far beyond their means." Frankel, Lee K., and Dawson, Miles W.: 
Workingmen's Insurance in Europe, p. 356. Russell Sage Foundation 
Publication. New York, Charities Publication Committee, 1910. 

See also Kober, Dr. Geo. M.: Industrial and Personal Hygiene, p. 90. 
Published by the President's Homes Commission, Washington, D. C, 1908. 

102 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

increasing at abnormally rapid rates. Here were facts, 
for the first time not only accessible, but challenging the 
curiosity of physicians. Might the causes for such com- 
mon ills lurk unrecognized in the workers' previous lives? 
The physicians were indeed forced to conclude that some 
common factors in the lives of workingmen and women must 
be responsible for the spread of certain diseases. What were 
such common factors? The question widens from the purely 
medical to something social and economic. Prevention is 
becoming each year a more insistent demand, and in the 
interests of prevention the nature of the worker's occupation, 
at which more than half of his waking life is spent, has re- 
ceived a new medical attention. 



6. THE INCREASE OF NERVOUS DISORDERS 

Now it is of unusual interest for our special inquiry, 
to find that these most common diseases of patients in the 
German insurance sanitaria (not including tuberculosis) 
were found to be precisely the nervous disorders springing 
from industrial strain and overpressure. 

In a thoughtful article, two physicians formerly of the 
Beelitz Sanitarium write:* 

" The increase of diseases of the nervous system among 
working people in the last decade is a fact that is now firmly 
established by extensive and carefully conducted statistical 
inquiry. This is most clearly evident in respect to the psy- 
choses; but there is also no doubt, in the minds of the most 
informed authorities, that neurasthenia — which, though less 
menacing than insanity to the efficiency and labor capacity 
of the worker is still sufficiently serious in this respect — is 
also steadily increasing in frequency and in severity. . . . 
Though, for some years, not only the laity, but also the chief 
medical experts on neurasthenia, as Lowenfeld and Bins- 
wanger, overlooked the working classes in relation to this 
disease, this attitude is now radically changed. On all sides, 

* Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift, 25. May, 1905, p. 820. Dr. 
P. Leubuscher u. Dr. W. Bibrowicz: Die Neurasthenie in Arbeiterkreisen. 

103 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

in the clinics and physicians' offices, and by the managers of 
the large insurance funds, proofs of the enormous increase 
of neurasthenia as a cause of inability to work are being 
presented/' 

In a recent report, the physician-in-chief of the Beelitz 
Sanitarium says:* 

" In the course of the year, 1815 men and 803 women 
were treated. . . . 

"Of the 1815 male patients who were discharged, 1206, 
in round numbers almost 70 per cent, were nervous cases. 
While in some the exciting cause of the breakdown might be 
variously explained, in by far the largest proportion of it 
arose from overstrain of their daily labor. 

"Of the female cases, more than one-seventh, or 128 
of 803, were anaemic and chlorotic. Among these, one-half 
of all suffered from nerve strain although other complica- 
tions might be present." 

The serious effects upon working capacity of these 
nervous disorders, in comparison with other diseases, may 
be seen in the following figures, giving the entire number of 
days lost from work on account of sickness. t 



COMPARATIVE NUMBER OF WORKING DAYS LOST BY PATIENTS 
AT BEELITZ SANITARIUM. — BY DISEASE GROUPS 

Total number of working days lost from 
Disease Groups time of cessation of work to time of dis- 

charge from Sanitarium 

Men Women 

Infections... 60 373 

Poisonings 1,259 

Malnutritions 2,773 7,861 

, Skin, Muscles, Joints, etc 5,177 935 

Nervous Disorders 44,965 25,075 

Dr. Liibenau, assistant physician at Beelitz, writes in 

* Verwaltungsbericht der Landesversicherungsanstalt Berlin fiir das 
Jahr 1909, p. 112. Similar statistics may be found in the reports of preced- 
ing years. 

t Entire table not reproduced. 

104 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

an article on " Heart Disease among the Working People of 
Berlin":* 

"In coming to the class of cardiac neuroses it is to be 
remarked that nervous affections of the heart among Berlin 
workmen are very common, as may be inferred from the 
extraordinary prevalence of neurasthenia. ... In most 
of these cases of simple neurasthenia, nervous affections of 
the heart are the rule. There is the sensation of palpita- 
tions, pain in the region of the heart, a feeling of great 
anxiety, and shortness of breath after exertion. Such dis- 
eases have serious importance for workers on account of car- 
diac complication. 

''The cases described above are limited to those in which 
the heart symptoms of nervous origin present the dominating 
features and which, therefore, may be regarded purely as 
cases of cardiac neuroses.'' 

Another physician. Dr. Emil Roth of Potsdam, who has 
been prominent in the study of diseases of working people, 

says:t 

" How alarming the increase of anaemia and neurasthe- 
nia among working people has been in the past ten years is 
shown by Mie records of the sick benefit funds, the polyclinics, 
and the hospitals. Many medical and scientific authorities 
have emphasized the increase of neurasthenia in the work- 
ing classes. The ample materials of the Berlin State Insur- 
ance Sanitarium at Beelitz have more particularly served to 
prove the steady increase of neurasthenia, — actually from 
18 per cent in 1897 to 40 per cent in 1904. Similar figures 
are shown by the sanitarium at Zehlendorf, where the highest 
percentage of neurotic patients were handworkers and skilled 
workers, with whom the combination of physical and mental 
strain reacted destructively on the nervous system.'' 

Doubtless such an increase in figures is due to improved 
diagnosis as well as to the actual growth of neurasthenia 
among working people. The insurance physicians have 

*Zeitschrift fur Klinische Medizin, Bd. 60. ..1906. Aus dem Sana- 
torium der Landesversicherungsanstalt Berlin. Uber Herzerkrankungen 
in der Berliner Arbeiterbevolkerung, pp. 136 and 137. 

t Roth, Dr Emil: Ermudung durch Berufsarbeit. Op. cit., pp. 
613-614. 

105 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

come to designate as neurasthenic, illnesses which formerly 
were called heart troubles, indigestion, and the like. 

But whatever the exact rate of increase in nervous dis- 
orders, we are more nearly concerned in the fact of their 
existence today, established by the more careful, immediate 
diagnosis of wage-earners by the insurance physicians. The 
liability of working people to nervous disorders from over- 
strain is still so little recognized that these physicians feel 
constrained to state specifically that they find no differences, 
as to clinical appearances, between the neurasthenic work- 
man and the neurasthenic patient of any other social class. 
The symptoms and conditions are the same. 

They are no less assured that the nervous breakdown 
of these workers is to be ascribed in large part to the in- 
dustrial overpressure to which they are subjected. Thus 
a recent authoritative American study of foreign insurance 
systems reports:* 

''The authorities insist, that increase of sickness is 
genuine and is due in Germany to the stress and strain of 
modern industry. Hours of labor are from eight to fifteen 
per day. The large stores, for instance, open at 8 a. m. 
and close at 8 p. m., allowing one hour for luncheon. It has 
been ascertained that in those factories where the hours are 
longest, the greatest number of cases of accident and sick- 
ness occur. Many workmen continue to work even when 
really incapacitated, and only when the slack season comes 
do they take advantage of the opportunity to consult a 
physician. This, it is asserted, accounts for the increase of 
sickness during such periods." 

Dr. Roth, quoted above, says on this point:! 

''The psychic factor is also important in another respect. 
With the progressive division of labor, work has become more 
and more mechanical. ... A definite share of over- 
fatigue and its sequels, especially neurasthenia, must be 
ascribed to this monotony; to the absence of spontaneity 
or joy in work. . . . But that monotony is also of 

* Frankel and Dawson, op. cit., p. 242. 
t Roth, op. cit., pp. 611; 613-615. 
io6 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

importance in so far as it nullifies pleasure in work, thereby 
favoring the onset of fatigue, must also be admitted from a 
part of the statistics. So, according to a factory inspector, 
the effect of certain light work with corset steels, admitting 
of no break for several hours, was distinctly fatiguing; the 
remedy was a periodical change of work for the employees 
in question. 

"Of greater importance is the excessive overstrain of 
piece-work, which indeed pays better, but at the cost of a 
speed and intensity of work which was formerly unknown. 
That these injurious effects first assail the weaker part of the 
working population is self-evident. My own observations, 
especially in textile mills, confirmed the frequency of anaemia 
and neurasthenia, especially among young women." 

An observer at the Zehlendorf sanitarium writes in a 
similar vein:* 

" It seems indubitable that factory work considerably 
outweighs other occupations in the sense that it provides the 
greatest number of factors tending to produce the neuroses 
of work in the industrial populations, and 1 am compelled 
to conclude that modern industry, continually developing 
as it is on more and more colossal lines, constitutes a danger- 
ous and potent cause for a continuous increase of neuras- 
thenia and hysteria/' 

Dr. Treves of Turin, who unites with physiological and 
psychological knowledge a keen insight into industrial con- 
ditions, sums up the whole question when he says if 

"Does what physicians call 'exhaustion' (surmenage) 
really exist in the working population? This question, which 
was not thought of in the earliest studies of neurasthenia, 
since neurasthenic conditions were supposed to be ailments 
of the liberal professions and those engaged in intense in- 
tellectual application exclusively, has today been answered 
by the medical profession in the affirmative; the daily ob- 

* Schonhals, Paul: Uber die Ursachen der Neurasthenic u. Hysteric 
bei Arbeitern, p. 26. Berlin, 1906. (A Study of 200 Cases in the Work- 
ingman's Sanitarium at Zehlendorf.) 

t Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, 
Vol. H, Sec. IV, Berlin, 1907, pp. 626-627. 

See also Part II of this volume, pp. 163-185. 

107 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

servation of workers in hospital and dispensary has led to 
this conclusion. . . . Overstrain resulting from occu- 
pation does exist; it is also entirely possible to combat it; 
there is, in short, a problem of overwork. . . . 

"This overstrain, which physiologists, psychologists, clini- 
cians, and above all nerve specialists and alienists, encounter so 
often as to be no longer deceived by it, does not present a 
well-defmed morbid picture; but it is a slow deviation, often 
obscured by its very slowness, and predisposing to illness of 
any nature; it is the borderland of illness.'' 

It is extremely interesting to find a similar stress upon 
the occurrence of nervous disorders in the detailed testi- 
mony of the distinguished physicians called in by the Cana- 
dian Royal Commission, which investigated the telephone 
service in Toronto a few years ago. Many of them, in their 
practice, had treated telephone operators for eye strain, 
headache, and affections of the ears. But the chief emphasis 
in their testimony was laid, not upon such specific injuries 
to the special sense organs, but upon the detriment to the 
operator's total health, particularly to her nervous organiza- 
tion. 

*'The service is such a strain upon the sight, hearing, 
speech, and muscles of the arms and body, that it is nerve 
exhausting," 

testified one physician* of eighteen years' practice, associate 
professor of clinical medicine in Toronto University. 

Another physician of thirty-one years' practice, testi- 
fied! that he had attended employes suffering 

"from nervous debility occasioned by the strain of that 
particular work upon the nervous system, which includes 
the senses of hearing, speaking, seeing, and using arms, 
causing too much strain upon the nerve center. ... In 
a number of cases of young ladies whom I had known as 
the physician of the family before they entered into the tele- 

* Dr. William B. Thistle. Report of the Royal Commission. Op. 
cit., p. 71. 

t Dr. William Britton of the University of Toronto, and of the Medical 
Council. Ibid., pp. 66-67. 

1 08 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

phone service and who were apparently healthy, after a 
length of service in the telephone office 1 had to prescribe 
for them for various types of nervous debility, and my advice 
to the majority of them was to discontinue the work. The 
constant listening and the keen buzzing means a state of 
tension of the nervous system all the time; fifteen minutes' 
relief would be a very slight one. I have quite often seen 
nervous hysteria from this nervous strain to the telephone 
girls." 

The medical superintendent of the Toronto Asylum 
testified:* 

"Work is automatic only to a limited extent. It re- 
quires a mental effort every time. Nervous strain is intense 
and would react on the physical health in a marked way 
after three years' service, and might pass on to the next 
generation in a more striking way than even in the present 
generation. I am basing that statement on my every day 
experiences with just such cases, having an experience on 
that kind of thing for several years." 

The professor of therapeutics, and teacher in connection 
with the diseases of the eye and ear in Toronto University, 
stated:! 

" The result of work would be nerve fag, and might be 
a nervous breakdown. . . . We know practically that 
changes in illumination from dark to light do irritate the 
optic nerve, and that is going on all the time. . . . 
Flashing of the light has an irritating effect and is in that way 
injurious. The nerves governing the extra ocular muscles 
which focus the eye upon the object looked upon, are the 
nerves where the greatest part of the strain comes. The 
sound kept up for hours must have an effect on the auditory 
nerves, and if for long hours, an injurious effect might cause 
deafness. The possibility of receiving shocks would add 
to the nerve strain, effect on vocal organs not much. The 
effect upon the nervous system is through the nerves of the 
eye and the auditory nerves; reaching is subsidiary; operat- 
ing together causes the difficulty." 

* Dr. Charles R. Clark. Ibid., p. 72. 

t Dr. J. M. McCallum. Ibid., p. 72. 

109 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Similar statements were repeated by all the physicians 
who testified. They concluded that the only preventive was 
to regulate most carefully the hours of work so taxing to 
women's physical powers; and above all, to break the work 
by proper relief periods for rest and recuperation. A con- 
tinuous stretch of work without rest, for even a comparatively 
short time, was unanimously condemned, precisely on the 
ground of the excessive nervous strain. 

" It is the length of time, rather than the number of calls 
that I emphasize." 

''It is the period that she is on duty with her faculties 
on the alert constantly that is more important than the 
volume of work done.'' 

Such is the sentiment repeatedly expressed. 

The only American publication on this subject known to 
the writer, are some notes by a St. Louis physician on the 
strikingly large percentage of neurasthenics found among 
7,000 garment workers, during a period of ten years, at the 
St. Louis Jewish Dispensary.* This physician, without 
going further afield, limits his conclusions strictly to the 
"stubborn fact" observed: "that 20 to 30 per cent of these 
7,000 garment workers applying for relief were found to be 
subjects of neurasthenia," meaning by that term the "clin- 
ical entity" understood among neurologists. He draws at- 
tention to two phases of their employment which seem to 
have a " very positive influence on the production of neuras- 
thenia." These are the irregularity of employment in the 
garment trades and piece-work — both of them common inci- 
dents of industrial life upon whose sinister possibilities we 
have elsewhere dwelt. 

* Schwab, Sidney I. (Professor of Nervous and Mental Diseases, St. 
Louis University): Neurasthenia Among Garment Workers. American 
Labor Legislation Review, Vol. I, No. i, p. 27. (January, 1911.) 



I 10 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

7. GENERAL PREDISPOSITION TO DISEASE 

The close causal connection between overfatigue and 
certain types of nervous disease must not obscure the much 
larger and more significant role of fatigue in undermining 
health, to which Professor Treves refers above as the ''bor- 
derland of illness." Fatigue not only causes specific ills; 
its victims are predisposed to disease in general. It is today 
almost a truism that health and freedom from illness spring 
from a maximum power of resistance. Not absence of ex- 
posure but strength of resistance is what keeps us well. It 
is the peculiar misery of the exhausted that they fall victims 
to the first infection or minor ailment which they may happen 
to encounter. This is apparent in everyday life; and in the 
laboratory, animal experimentation tends to show that 
fatigue markedly diminishes the power of the blood to over- 
come bacteria and their toxic products.* 

The danger of even indirectly spreading infectious 
diseases needs no emphasis. Work which exhausts, and so 
contributes to the spread of infections and epidemics, is 
clearly a public as well as a private menace. On this ground, 
the overstrain of thousands of workingmen and working- 
women which keeps a large part of our population in fit 
condition to take and spread contagions, should be considered 
as intolerable as any other provocation of epidemics. 

But even careful observers are apt to underrate or ignore 
the predominating influence of overfatigue in causing the 
lowered vitality and the minor ailments of working people. 
Our analysis of exhaustion as due to the accumulation of 
fatigue products and an excessive drain on men's energies, 

* Charrin and Roget: Archives de Physiologic normale et patholo- 
gique, 1890. No. 2, p. 273. 

Wetzel, G.: Pfluger's Archiv, 1900. Bd. 82, p. 505. 

Cohnstein, Dr. Wilhelm: Virchow's Archiv, 1892. Bd. 130, p. 332. 

De Sandro, Domenico: Riforma Med., 1910, XXXV, pp. 841 and 871. 
Reviewed in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. LVI, 
No. I, p. 46. (Jan. 7, 1911.) 

Abbott, A. C., and Gildersleeve, N.: The Influence of Muscular Fatigue 
and of Alcohol on Certain of the Normal Defenses. Univ. of Penn. Medical 
Bui. Vol. 23, pp. 169-181. 1910. 

I I I 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

will have been useless if it does not help us to realize anew how 
health hangs upon the metabolic balance; how vitality and 
resistance spring buoyant from physiologic equilibrium; and 
how fatally overstrain tips the scales down. 

8. A NEW MEDICAL SCRUTINY OF OVERWORK 

The physiological study of overwork must be sharply 
differentiated from the longer established study of special 
trade diseases. Medical interest in the special diseases of 
various trades is of long standing, and has been growing 
steadily since the Italian Ramazzini first drew attention to 
the diseases of working people over 200 years ago.* The 
literature of special trade illnesses — lead poisoning, phos- 
phorous poisoning, arsenic poisoning, anthrax, diseases from 
lint, fluff, dust, humidity, extremes of temperature, and the 
like — is enormous, a recent partial bibliography in regard to 
tuberculosis alone filling almost twenty printed pages of 
close type.f 

In every country where sickness insurance exists, the 
study of trade diseases is bound to grow steadily. Day by 
day and year by year many physicians attached to insurance 
societies have opportunities of observing and treating cases 
of industrial disease. Thus, for instance, in 1908 the largest 
sickness insurance society in Germany, the Local Society of 
Leipzig, employed under contract 410 physicians, 137 spe- 
cialists, 23 dentists, 55 druggists, and 20 opticians. J Trade 
diseases, indeed, have become so important a branch of 
medical practice abroad that the establishment of special 
chairs at universities for the training of specialists in these 
branches has been advocated. § Medical courses on simula- 

* Ramazzini, B.: De Morbis Artificium Diatriba, Modena, 1701. 

t Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, No. 79, 1908. Hoffman, 
Frederick L.: Mortality from Consumption in Dusty Trades. 

I Frankel and Dawson, op. cit., p. 258. 

§ Congres Internationale des Assurance Sociales. Rome, 1908, Session 
8. Peyser, Dr. Alfred (Berlin): Die Soziale Medizin als Gegenstand des 
Unterrichts. Sternberg, Prof. Dr. Max (Vienna): Die Soziale Medizin 
als Besonderer Unterrichts Gegenstand. 

I 12 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

tion, or the attempts of working people to counterfeit trade 
diseases, are even now regularly given by European pro- 
fessors. In March, 1910, the first clinic for the treatment of 
industrial diseases was dedicated in Milan. 

But in all this, the emphasis upon fatigue and the causal 
connection between overwork and disease has until recently 
been slight. Now, for the first time, in the workmen's in- 
surance system, the sinister role of overwork is beginning 
to show itself unmistakably. The medical observation of 
fatigue in industry, even abroad, is recent and still quite dis- 
organized. There is abundant complaint that the vast op- 
portunities of investigation among insured working people 
are not yet utilized; that the present methods of observation 
are inadequate, and that standards are lacking for diagnoses 
of illnesses and their industrial causes. But the essential 
fact is that a new medical scrutiny of modern work and its 
strain on human energies has at least begun. It centers on 
fatigue as itself a danger of occupation. 

This new medical emphasis on industrial fatigue and 
overwork was conspicuous at the last meeting of the In- 
ternational Congress of Hygiene held at Berlin in 1907. 
Discussions of fatigue and exhaustion as dangers of occupa- 
tion were given a new place of prominence.* Even earlier, 
this congress of physicians and scientists had devoted some 
attention to the subject at" its meetings in Budapest, 1894, 
and in Paris, 1900. At its meeting in Brussels, 1903, the 
congress urged governments to study overfatigue as one of 
the most fertile sources of ill health among working people. 
This recommendation was quoted and repeated in hearings 
before the British Interdepartmental Committee on Phy- 
sical Degeneration in 1904. 

The Italians, among whom the laborator}/ studies of 
fatigue have been so extensively carried on, take a prominent 
part in this new research. They call it inclusively Patalogia 
del Lavo'ro, pathology of work, or the study of all those factors 

* Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. Discussed by Dr. Z. Treves of 
Turin, Dr. E. Roth of Potsdam, and others. 

8 I 13 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

in work which result in abnormal or pathologic consequences 
to the human organism. As Dr. Giglioli of Florence, himself 
one of the young Italians at work in this new field, says:* 

"The first vague Ramazzinian conception of trade dis- 
eases has developed into the wider and more definite theory 
of the pathology of labor. This most important division of 
social medicine has developed in a very short time into a well 
organized and distinct study. It is not, nor does it tend to 
become, what is popularly called a ' specialty,' but it has the 
dignity of being considered the most modern branch of 
medical study, and has its ardent expounders, clinics, labora- 
tories, and students. 

"It is a very modern development, stimulated by the 
most recent scientific researches and acquisitions in hygiene, 
economics, and politics. Through it, new methods of study 
have developed, by which not only the typical trade diseases 
but all the factors which bear upon the health conditions of 
wage-earners are estimated and studied clinically and ex- 
perimentally. . . . 

"Modern pathology thus unites study of fatigue and 
nutrition with the most recent theories of predisposition to 
infection induced in formerly healthy organisms. It recon- 
ciles the very latest theories of neuro-pathology with the 
latest ideas about the neurasthenics of labor. While it does 
not attempt to invade the other branches of medicine, it 
does draw from them facts and data with which to re-en- 
force its own postulates on social economic methods. This 
most modern development may appear to some too vague 
and general, to others too restricted, but it is certainly gain- 
ing ground and growing continually more complete and 
definite.'' 

This new emphasis is likewise shown in the able little 
Italian monthly called // Ramanini, from which the above 
is quoted. This is a journal of social medicine, started in 
1907. In the admirable bibliographies of current socio- 
medical-literature which // Ramanini publishes for the 
International Commission on Trade Diseases (founded 1906), 

* // Rama^iini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno I. Fasc. 
12. (December, 1907.) Giglioli, Dr. G. Y. (R. Istituto di Clinica Medica, 
Firenze): Nuovo Ricerche e Nuovo Conquiste nei Campo della Patologia e 
del' Igiene. 

114 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

prominent place is given to the section headed " Surmenage/* 
or exhaustion. 

In the "pathology of labor'' belong indeed the trade 
diseases with their train of temporary and chronic ills. But 
the first place is taken by those disturbances of metabolism, 
those self-generated poisons of fatigue, which are common not 
only to workers in so-called dangerous occupations, but to 
every man, woman, and child who breathes and works. 



9. OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUCH STUDY IN THE UNITED STATES 

In the almost total absence, in this country, of medi- 
cal emphasis upon the pathogenic nature of industrial over- 
fatigue, it is significant to read Professor Irving Fisher's 
note in his Report on National Vitality, prepared for the 
National Conservation Commission. He says:* 

"The present working day is a striking example of the 
failure to conserve national vitality. . . . The fatigue 
of workmen is largely traceable to their long work day. . . 

"The relatively slight impairment of efficiency due to 
overfatigue leads to more serious impairment. Just as minor 
ailments prove to have an unsuspected importance when 
considered as gateways to serious illness, so the inefficiency 
from overfatigue is vested with great significance. Obviously, 
if overfatigue would be reduced to a minimum, this reduction 
would carry with it the prevention of the major part of minor 
ailments, which in turn would lead to a great reduction in 
more serious illnesses, and this finally would lead to a great 
reduction in mortality. A typical succession of events is, 
first fatigue, then colds, then tuberculosis, then death. Pre- 
vention, to be effective, must begin at the beginning." 

Back of the great scourges and acute contagions, back 
even of the minor ailments which often precede them, lies 
the lowered vitality, the unbalanced metabolism, to which, 
as we have seen, overwork so largely contributes. Serious 
discussion or consideration of this fatal sequence among 

* Bulletin of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health, 
No. 30, pp. 45 and 47, July, 1909. 

H5 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

working people is rare indeed. It is touched on with pecuHar 
insight by Dr. Edward T. Devine in his stirring presentation 
of a dark topic, "Misery and Its Causes.'' 

From the point of view of social welfare, Dr. Devine 
holds the minor ailments responsible for far greater misery 
among the poor than has been realized or ministered to by 
the medical profession, in comparison with the great plagues 
and the more acutely contagious diseases. 

" I suppose," he says,* ''that no medical authority would 
think of grouping together such diseases as I have named 
(rheumatism, indigestion, influenza, colds, catarrh, bronchitis 
and constipation), as from the medical point of view they may 
have nothing in common ; but for us they have this in com- 
mon, that they increase to an enormous, though uncalculable, 
extent the sum total of misery which men, women and chil- 
dren have to bear; they prevent that enjoyment of the good 
things of life to which we are fully entitled for the extra- 
ordinary amount of hard work that we do, by the bounty of 
nature and the abundance of our inherited wealth." 

It is a new thing to have such "minor" sufferings named 
as "altogether undervalued causes of misery." It is a new 
thing, too, to have their importance squarely faced, as 
follows : 

" I challenge the medical schools and laboratories, the 
institutions of research and family physicians, as not having 
paid sufficient attention to these disabilities; but beyond 
this, and as a more fundamental diagnosis of the difficulty, I 
challenge society as having permitted here very grave mal- 
adjustments in not having appreciated the importance of 
ailments of this kind, and for this reason not having been 
willing to pay for the service of investigating their cause, 
their character and their cure, or for the service of treating 
them in time."t 

Our study of fatigue would lead us to go a step farther 
than Dr. Devine. He is presenting, with keen and sympa- 

* Devine, Edward T.: Misery and Its Causes, p. 84. New York, 
The Macmillan Company, 1909. 
t Ibid., p. 83. 

ii6 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

thetic insight, the causes of misery for the "out-of-health, 
out-of-work, out-of-friends/' We are concerned primarily 
with the other end of the industrial scale — the overworked, the 
overstrained, the overwhelmed. We are regarding Work in a 
broad physiological sense. In the discussion which follows 
we shall narrow our field further to those for whom legisla- 
tion is today most urgent and practicable, the working 
women and children in need of state protection. But at this 
point, in behalf of all human workers — just because they 
are human! — we would paraphrase Dr. Devine's words and 
challenge the medical schools and laboratories, the institutes 
of research and family physicians, as not having paid suffi- 
cient attention to industrial overstrain and the intolerably 
long hours of labor, which, through the actual poisons of 
fatigue, must be regarded as breeding and augmenting the 
so-called minor ailments of working people. 

And beyond this, and as a more fundamental diagnosis 
of the difficulty (to paraphrase Dr. Devine further) we chal- 
lenge society as not having appreciated the importance of 
industrial overwork and exhaustion, and for this reason hav- 
ing allowed them to persist from generation to generation 
without study of their effects or of the violence done to man's 
natural endowment — his physiologic mechanism. 

Abroad, a new correlation of such scientific study and the 
industrial regime has at least begun. It has not yet gone as 
far as has the scientific scrutiny of overwork in school chil- 
dren. Such observation of school children — their capacities, 
attentions, fatigues — has in the last few years become a 
favorite theme of both pedagogues and physiologists. It is 
concerned chiefly with the fatigue of attention due to long 
school hours, and the reaction of such fatigue upon the child's 
total health. Scientific tests and measurements of fatigue 
in school children have accordingly been carried on for some 
years past with more or less success, and a vast amount of 
literature on the subject exists today. 

For effective prevention, we need precisely a new study 
of undue fatigue in industry. Both for a more rational or- 

117 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ganization of business and for intelligent legislation we need 
definite knowledge of the effects of such industrial facts as 
those which we have briefly reviewed. We need to know, 
from systematic and continuous study, what are the actual 
results of speeding, and piece-work, monotony and mechan- 
ical rhythms, and the rest. The workday, as we have seen, 
is too long when it goes beyond physiological limits; in other 
words, when no adequate margin of rest is allowed for tissue 
repair. We need to know for the various trades, and for the 
various operations in those trades, what is an adequate 
margin of rest. We need to know whether nervous diseases 
are on the increase among industrial workers in this country 
as they are reported to be abroad. We need to transfer into 
the factory and workshop the investigations into fatigue 
which have yielded so rich a harvest in the laboratories. We 
need, above all, men of the highest caliber and professional 
standing to plan such investigations along broad inclusive 
lines, so as to discount what is transient and temporary, and 
to obtain the underlying facts, for the conservation of health 
and efficiency. 

Many enlightened employers already provide medical 
supervision of the hygiene of their employes, in the interests 
of efficiency. These agencies could well be used for such 
systematic and continuous study as we have advocated. 
Once the importance of the subject is realized, once over- 
strain is recognized as itself a danger of occupation, study of 
overwork and its sequelae must follow. 

Another source of information on the effects of industrial 
overpressure has been hitherto unused. This is in the records 
of the clinics and hospitals where working people are treated. 
In this country we have not the opportunities afforded by the 
foreign insurance systems to study sick and convalescent 
wage-earners. But from the thousands of working men and 
women to whom the hospitals minister yearly, could they 
not learn those antecedent facts as to the strain of employ- 
ment to which, as we have seen, foreign insurance physicians 
have been forced to turn in the interests of prevention? 

ii8 



STUDIES OF PHYSICAL OVERSTRAIN IN INDUSTRY 

The social service work established in connection with vari- 
ous hospitals, precisely for prevention, is a first step in this 
direction. The out-patient department in many hospitals 
follows patients into their homes in order to make sure that 
the benefits of hospital treatment are not immediately un- 
done by unhygienic living. This work could well be supple- 
mented by obtaining and keeping accurate records of the 
industrial as well as the medical history of patients. No 
better work for prevention could be done than by attempt- 
ing to discover those elements in industry which contribute 
directly to the illnesses of thousands of workers and carry 
them year by year in throngs to the hospitals. 

Through the nurses who visit patients in their homes and 
establish confidential relations with them, the machinery for 
such an additional inquiry is available. The medical ex- 
amination and record of patients at the hospitals give their 
physical histories in full. An invaluable additional body of 
information could be secured if detailed records were system- 
atically kept during a series of years showing the previous 
trade history of patients: their previous hours of work, the 
length of overtime work at rush seasons, their night work if 
any, the machinery or processes at which they were employed 
before illness, and many similar questions. These histories, 
to be accurate, would have to be corroborated by a separate 
industrial investigation of previous places of employment, 
to confirm the workers' accounts of themselves. Such an 
investigation could be kept within manageable limits by 
confining it to the year or two years previous to the workers' 
illness. 

To learn and to accumulate the histories of patients suffer- 
ing from specific trade diseases would obviously throw light 
upon many dangerous occupations and dangerous processes 
of manufacture as yet unstudied in this country. To learn 
and accumulate the histories of those who have been the 
victims of industrial overpressure would be a no less valu- 
able contribution to the complex study of industrial fatigue. 
This can never be done by collecting a few cases. The 

119 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

value of such an investigation would be cumulative, if it 
could prove, after a series of years, by large numbers of indi- 
vidual and well authenticated cases, the important part 
played by overstrain in the production of disease and ill- 
health among wage-earners.* 

Such case study of wage-earners who have succumbed 
to illness has a marked advantage over the more general study 
of wage-earners at work. What we seek to know is precisely 
what is implied in the Italian phrase " the pathology of labor.'' 
Just as in medicine the study of pathology goes hand in hand 
with the study of physiology — the morbid as well as the 
normal reactions often yielding most suggestive clues — so in 
industry, not only the physiological but the pathological 
aspects must be scrutinized: the infections, anaemias, nervous 
disorders, pelvic derangements in women, and the rest. 

It is, in the last resort, those who succumb who must de- 
termine the dangerousness of any trade. Thus, for instance, 
many men no doubt can and do work in caissons, without 
contracting the dreaded ''bends.'' Yet the legislation which 
prescribes special rules of hygiene for caisson work is based 
on the victims, not the survivors. Hence it is essential to 
learn from a scientific observation of the victims of industry 
— possibly in hospitals and clinics as suggested above — those 
unhealthful and dangerous processes of industry which lead 
to physical disaster. 

* The beginnings of such an investigation into the trade history as 
well as the home life of clinic patients is related in the last report of the Social 
Service Department of the Massachusetts General Hospital (Jan. 1, 1911- 
Jan. 1, 19i2). Eighty working girls who had applied for medical relief 
during eight months, were studied. 



120 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION: FATIGUE 
AND OUTPUT 

IN the previous chapters we have found in the laws of 
fatigue a scientific basis for legislation, and an explanation 
of the effects of overwork on health. We may proceed 
now to seek in the same physiological laws an explanation of 
the effects of overwork on output and production. To under- 
stand the economic as well as the physical effects of regula- 
tion, we must turn back to those physiological truths on which 
both alike are based. 

We have sought to bridge the gap between laboratory 
and factory, and to show how work, whether it be the leg 
jerk of the frog in scientific experiments, or the contractions 
of our human muscles in industrial processes, results in 
chemical reactions within the workers' tissues. Now we 
must turn from the person of the worker to his accomplish- 
ment, from study of the performer to a scrutiny of his per- 
formance. 

Just as the methods of the laboratory have yielded sug- 
gestive analogies in estimating the subjective fatigue of the 
worker, so they help to estimate the objective value of work 
accomplished. The diagrams, or curves of work, recorded 
upon the sooty drum at the laboratory, represent not exactly 
but symbolically the fluctuations of what is known in industry 
as output, or production. They explain why long and late 
hours of labor must physiologically result in lessened output. 

This is the more important because regulation of the 
length of working hours has been so bitterly contested by 
those who feared that any lessening of the hours of labor 
meant a corresponding economic loss. From the first dawn 

121 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

of protective legislation in England over a century ago to the 
present day, the rallying cry for the most diverse-minded 
opponents of legislation has been the threatened ruin of in- 
dustry and manufactures. Solemn or hysterical, an honest 
conviction, hypocritical, pseudo-scientific, this cry has been 
more or less successfully invoked in every country, at every 
attempted advance, bringing with it all the rancors and bit- 
ternesses through which the cause of legislation has been 
dragged. Yet the unconscious consensus of testimony from 
various states and countries on the economic benefits of 
the short day, recorded in official and unofficial documents, 
is in its turn as impressive as we found the unanimity of 
evidence on the physical effects of the long day. 

For the most part, however, all this body of information 
is ignored and allowed to fade into the limbo of forgotten 
things, in our practical efforts at legislation. We must keep 
reiterating that the unsolved questions and difficulties are of 
fundamentally the same general character today as in the 
past. Practically the world over, the state of the sweated 
trades in 1912 is "closely parallel to that of the Lancashire 
cotton mills in 1802." To come nearer home, factory legis- 
lation in Pennsylvania, New York, and other American states 
has not yet reached the stage of British textile legislation of 
more than sixty years ago. And most significant of all, it is 
still the cry that industry will, be ruined by protecting the 
workers, which most hampers our advance. 

It is the cotton lobby which throws its great influence 
against the workers in the cotton states, the glass lobby in 
the glass states, the laundrymen's association wherever legis- 
lation for laundry workers is proposed, the retail dealers' as- 
sociation against any relief for shop girls. Individual em- 
ployers, it goes without saying, are humane and enlightened, 
but their official organizations and representatives have won 
a sinister distinction in opposing labor legislation. Such 
associations of employers as those named above, are found 
officially in the field at every session of the state legislatures. 
It was, for instance, the Illinois Manufacturers' Association 

122 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

which officially combatted any restriction whatsoever of 
women's hours in Illinois, and, failing to defeat the passage 
of the ten-hour law in 1909, bent all their energies to have 
the law annulled by the courts. It was the laundrymen's 
associations which played the same part in Oregon in 1907, 
and even carried a case against the Oregon ten-hour law to 
the United States Supreme Court. It is the Retail Dry Goods 
Merchants Association of New York City which by varied 
means has succeeded in stifling all limitation of hours for adult 
women employed in department stores. It was the official 
Manufacturers' Association of Colorado which issued a 
statement to the legislature in 1911, pointing out the dangers 
of the proposed eight-hour law, and denying its need by re- 
counting the contributions of Colorado manufacturers to 
various charities. The universal argument which has so often 
crowned their official efforts with success is the abject money- 
makers' plea, the fear of loss — "Save us lest we perish." 

As the authors of the standard history of factory legis- 
lation have said, writing with what Mr. Sidney Webb calls 
"commendable restraint," as "historical students":* 

" In the beginning, the proposal to restrict children to a 
working day about 30 per cent longer than strong men now 
think good for themselves, was greeted almost hysterically, 
and the ruin of trade and commercial collapse of the country 
were freely prophesied as the necessary result. Inquiry after 
inquiry, commission after commission, have demonstrated 
the groundlessness of these rather unmanly terrors, yet the 
Factory Code is still the barest minimum and scarcely ever is 
there a discussion in Parliament on the subject that does not 
reveal that the masses of information and material that exist 
for the full economic justification of further measures are 
practically unknown to all but a select few of our legislators." 

1. GENERAL EXPERIENCE IN ENGLAND 

As far as our immediate subject is concerned, — the re- 
lation between fatigue and output, — the testimony of history 

* Hutchins, B. L., and Harrison, A.: History of Factory Legislation, 
p. 253. London, P. S. King and Son, 1903. 

123 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

is continuous and impressive. In England, for instance, 
whose industrial experience is longest and most fully re- 
corded, the cry that legislation would ruin the country united 
men of the most scattered beliefs and parties to oppose the 
Ten Hours Movement. The long file of Parliamentary De- 
bates from 1832 onward gives vivid glimpses of the conflict 
that raged, while industrialism was bursting into life, after 
the long European wars. The Napoleonic bogie had been 
laid. The ports of Europe were open again to British com- 
merce. Watt's steam engine, patented in 1769, had ad- 
vanced into general use. The day of industrialism had come. 
Terrible as is some of the testimony in the Debates, showing 
the ugly domination of men's humaner instincts by greed, 
and the almost intolerable slowness with which nineteenth 
century empiricism treated each separate abuse as a single 
issue, unrelated to any general principles of protection, yet 
these debates are seldom remote or academic. They are 
vivid cross-sections of British history, pulsing with life. 

We see the Earl of Shaftesbury, then Lord Ashley, stand- 
ard-bearer of the cause, in the great debate of 1844 stung 
from the lofty tone habitual to him in combatting oppression. 
Once too often his opponents had flung the foolish taunt that 
he was attacking commercial interests merely as the repre- 
sentative of a different social class, a taunt not unknown to 
reformers today. " Most solemnly do 1 deny the charge," 
began Lord Ashley, and breaking into anger: 

" If you think me wicked enough, do you think me fool 
enough for such a hateful policy? Can any man in his senses 
now hesitate to believe that the permanent prosperity of the 
manufacturing body ... is essential, not only to the 
welfare, but absolutely to the existence of the British Em- 
pire?"* 

We see Bright and Hume and Cobden, leaders of the 
Manchester School, opposing what they called the "inter- 
ference'' of the government (a still familiar cry!) as certain 
to bring ruin upon manufacture. These men were fighting, 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, Mar. 15, 1844. 
124 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

we must remember, the battles of free trade. The struggles 
for the Factory Acts and for free trade were practically 
synchronous. The Corn Laws were repealed only a year 
before the final passage of the Ten Hours Bill (1847), and 
the political economists denounced in one breath govern- 
ment regulation of working hours and government monopoly 
of trade, on philosophic grounds of laissei /aire. 

"The people ask for freedom in their industry," cries 
John Bright in 1844,* "for the removal of shackles on their 
trade; you deny it to them and then forbid them to labor as 
if working less would give them more food whilst your monop- 
oly laws make food scarce and dear. Give them liberty to 
work, give them the market of the world for their products." 

Yet, on the whole, this opposition to the ten-hour 
movement did not center on abstract ideas of freedom or 
philosophy. It was much more practical and modern. 
Men did not vote on any party lines — Whigs, Tories, and 
Radicals were all intermingled. f As has been well said, the 
issue resolved itself into what we may term the optimistic 
argument, asserting that the alleged overwork was grossly 
exaggerated (again, how familiar a defense!) and the com- 
mercial argument which pleaded that the manufacturing in- 
terests would be bankrupted by the proposed restriction to 
ten hours. t 

This was indeed long held to be the vantage ground of the 
opponents of restriction, — the dire consequences which must 
follow the curtailment of the last two hours of the twelve- 
hour day. 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series. March 15, 1844. 

t A wellknown passage in Greville's Memoirs describes the confusion: 
" I never remember so much excitement as has been caused by Ashley's 
Ten Hours Bill, nor a more curious political state of things, such intermin- 
gling of parties, such a confusion of opposition. . . So much zeal, asperity, 
and animosity, so many reproaches hurled backwards and forwards. . . 
John Russell, voting for '10 hours' after all he professed last year, has filled 
the world with amazement. . . The opposition was divided, Palmerston 
and Lord John one way, Baring and Labouchere the other. It has been 
a very queer affair." Memoirs, Vol. H, pp. 236-237. Longmans, Green 
and Co., London, 1885. 

t Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 88. Second Edition. 1911. 

125 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

No one issue in labor legislation has been more befogged 
by prejudice and passion than this relative productivity of 
late working hours. The question arose at the very outset 
of the industrial era in 1837, when the economist Senior put 
forth his long-lived economic fallacy that profit depends on 
the output of the last hours of work, and that, consequently, 
profits would be destroyed if the eleventh or even the twelfth 
hour of work were curtailed.* 

This superstition has died hard. No contention did 
more to retard the reduction of the twelve-hour day in Eng- 
land. It seemed plausible enough to men, in the first flush of 
invention and industrial expansion, who looked on human 
labor as a mere adjunct to the machine. For obviously, with 
machines every additional hour of operation means addi- 
tional profit. The fixed charges of installation and operation 
— rent, taxes, and the like — are not increased proportionally 
by added hours of operation ; hence the last hours were sup- 
posed to represent clear profit after expenses had been met 
by the earlier hours of work. It was passionately asserted 
that the commercial supremacy of England hung on the last 
one or two hours of work, which gave the profits.! 

Senior's extraordinary argument was introduced verba- 
tim in Parliament by Mr. Milner Gibson in 1844, as ''sound 
and indisputable.'' If the manufacturer's profits were de- 
stroyed by cutting off the last two hours of work, he said, 
the laborer was in effect deprived of earning his means of 
subsistence. Articles and arguments for and against Senior 

* Senior, Nassau: Letters on the Factory Act. London, 1837. 

t "The following analysis will show that in a mill so worked (twelve 
hours a day and nine on Saturday, according to the Act of 1833) the 
whole profit is derived from the last hour. I will suppose a manufacturer 
to invest £100,000— £80,000 in his mill and machinery and £20,000 in raw 
material and wages. The annual return of that mill, supposing the capital 
to be turned once a year, and gross profits to be 15 per cent, ought to be 
goods worth £115,000, produced by the constant conversion and reconver- 
sion of the £20,000 circulating capital from money into goods and from goods 
into money in periods of rather more than two months. Of this £115,000 
each of the twenty-three half-hours of work produced 5/1 15ths of l/23rd. 
Of these 23/23rds (constituting the whole £115,000), 20, that is to say, 
£100,000 out of the £115,000, simply replace the capital; l/23rd (or 
£5,000) out of the £115,000 makes up for the deterioration of the mill and 

126 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

raged in the daily and^weekly press as'well as in Parliament. 
Even ten years later, just before the ten hours bill was to 
pass in 1847, we find Joseph Hume making an impassioned 
appeal still based on Senior against interference with 'Tixed 
capital/' He concurred in the clear and satisfactory argu- 
ments of one whom "he was proud to call his friend,'' that 

"ten hours paid only the expenses of the 'plant' and the 
wages of labor, and that if work stopped at ten hours, there 
would be no profit on the capital invested. . . . The 
surplus, then, whether it was one, one and a half or two hours 
beyond ten hours, was the only time from which a remunera- 
tive return for capital could be made, without which it could 
not be expected that men would carry on business."* 

But the irresistible logic of events was already beginning 
to overcome these specious arguments. Senior's theory was 
not, in the long run, borne out by practice. The human ele- 
ment, ignored in the theory, asserted itself practically, and 
the "spoiled work" which had to be thrown away, or done 
over again the next morning, increased rapidly during the 
late exhausting hours of the twelve-hour day. As early as 
1843 an inquiry made for the second Children's Employment 
Commission by Mr. J. L. Kennedy as to the cloth print works 
in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire, showed how the 
system of long hours resulted in deteriorated output. One 
firm, for instance, tried to run their mill fifteen hours per day 
and found that after the first month output began to fall 
off in both quantity and quality. By the fourth month of 
the trial, the spoiled work had doubled, and production had 

the machinery. The remaining 2/23rds, the last two of the twenty-three 
half-hours of every day, produce the net profits of 10 per cent. If therefore 
(prices remaining the same) the factory could be kept at work thirteen hours 
instead of eleven and one-half, by an addition of about £2,600 to the cir- 
culating capital, the net profit would be more than doubled. On the other 
hand, if the hours of working were reduced by one hour per day (prices 
remaining the same) net profits would be destroyed; if they were reduced 
by an hour and a half, even gross profit would be destroyed. The circulat- 
ing capital would be replaced, but there would be no fund to compensate 
the progressive deterioration of the fixed capital." Senior, op. cit. Quoted 
in Hutchins and Harrison, p. 88. 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, Feb. 10, 1847. 
127 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

fallen from 100 per cent to 90 per cent. This they attributed 
to the gradual exhaustion of the workers. 

"The amount of spoiled work increased to such an 
alarming degree that the parties referred to felt themselves 
compelled to shorten the hours of labor to avoid loss."* 

Upon reducing the hours of labor, the proportion of 
spoiled work promptly fell and output rose again. This was 
indeed Lord Shaftesbury's great argument, and the argument 
of Robert Owen and others of practical experience: not 
only that production deteriorated in amount and quality 
during the last two exhausting hours of the twelve-hour day, 
but that the workers' total efficiency, their physical and moral 
powers, all were gradually impaired. The shorter day, on 
the contrary, released them before exhaustion arrived, and 
in the long run tended to preserve working capacity at a 
higher level. 

Between 1844 and 1860 more and more evidence of this 
kind was accumulating. By 1861, the president of the 
economic section of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science could write of the general agreement through- 
out the country that 

" if there has been one change which more than another has 
. . . placed the manufacturing enterprise of the country 
on a safe basis and has conferred upon us resources against 
the effects of foreign competition which can scarcely be over- 
valued, it is precisely the changes which have been brought 
about by the . . . efforts to establish in manufacturing 
occupations a sound system of legal interference with the 
hours of labour."t 

During this period many wellknown opponents of legis- 
lation who had foretold the destruction of British industry, 
such as Cobden, Mr. Roebuck, the Home Secretary Sir 
James Graham, and others, became converted. Mr. Roe- 

* British Sessional Papers, 1843, Vol. XIII, p. 72. 
t Reprinted in Journal of the Statistical Society, Vol. XXIV, 1861, 
p. 463. 

128 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

buck's recantation is so vivacious and made so great an im- 
pression at the time that it ought in part to be quoted: 

''Very early in my Padiamentary career, Lord Ashley, 
now the Earl of Shaftesbury, introduced a bill of this descrip- 
tion. 1 being an ardent political economist, as I am now, 
opposed the measure . . . and was very much influenced 
in my opposition by what the gentlemen of Lancashire said. 
They declared that it was the last half hour of the work per- 
formed by their operatives which made all their profits, and 
that if we took away that last half hour we should ruin the 
manufacturers of England. I listened to that statement and 
trembled for the manufacturers of England, but Lord Ashley 
persevered. Parliament passed the bill which he brought in. 
From that time down to the present, the factories of this 
country have been under state control, and I appeal to this 
house whether the manufacturers of England have suffered 
by this legislation. But the Honourable member for Man- 
chester (John Bright) still, 1 fmd, makes the same objection. 
He gets up and prophesies all sorts of evil if we interfere now; 
but he has kept out of view the evils for the prevention of 
which we are now about to interfere . . . Having pre- 
vented this misery in the one case, let us interfere to prevent 
it in the other."* 

The chief agencies by which these real results of the acts 
were becoming known, were the reports of the factory in- 
spectors. It was a step of quite unappreciated importance 
when in 1833 the first inspectors were appointed to enforce 
the act. Supervision by the local justices, as first enacted, 
had failed. The appointment of inspectors by the central 
government for the express purpose of enforcement has been 
well called "the turning point of legislation," a step "whose 
importance cannot be exaggerated." f It was one of the 
first instances of creating a special department of the central 
government to administer a particular act. The inspectors 
were also to keep the government informed of the condition 
of the factory population, the degree to which the laws were 

* Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series, Mar. 21, 1860. 
t Webb, Sidney, and Cox, H. : The Eight Hours Day, p. 199. London, 
W. Scott, 1891. 

9 129 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

meeting the existing evils, and the Hke questions. Their 
reports were sent in to one of the secretaries of state twice a 
year or oftener. Hence it came about that there gradually 
became available a body of unprejudiced information, — an 
*' invaluable continuous record of industrial conditions by 
trained observers, free from local bias and partiality, whose 
business it was to renew their visits at stated periods and 
note what changes took place within their view."* 

This has been one of the most important services of 
the inspection force in England and on the continent. How- 
ever short they may have fallen in the actual enforcement 
of the laws, owing to the great odds against them, — the 
hostility of employers and parents, the inadequacy of the 
laws and their own entirely inadequate numbers, — they have, 
at any rate, bequeathed to us an invaluable record of the 
actual effects of legislation. Those who favored the exten- 
sion of the Act of 1847 and the inclusion of other trades, could 
at least point to the written accounts of what had been ac- 
complished in one regulated industry. As other trades were 
gradually included by subsequent legislation, — print works, 
bleacheries, lace factories, hosiery, hardware, and so forth, — 
the factory inspectors continued to show how manufacture 
in the long run profited instead of suffering by regulation. 

Human nature is such, however, that immediate profits 
tend to outweigh future benefits, which can be proved only in 
the long run. Immediate profits make a much more popular 
appeal, and have distorted the issue, time and again, in suc- 
cessive campaigns for the short day, in each industrial coun- 
try in turn. It was no peculiarity of the English that they so 
often preferred the immediate returns of the long working 
day, so that after more than one hundred years of legislation 
the Factory Code must still be called a minimum of pro- 
tection. The same higgling and the same specious argu- 
ments have been effective in Germany, in France, in Belgium, 
in the United States, and wherever legislation on working 
hours has been undertaken. Only repeated demonstrations 

* Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 72. 
130 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

and restatements of the true economic effects of short hours, 
by enHghtened employers, factory inspectors, economists, 
and laboring men have at all oiTset the illusory immediate 
profits of the long day. England has the longest and most 
fully recorded industrial history; but the same sequence could 
be traced in the other industrial countries. 

2. GENERAL EXPERIENCE IN THE UNITED STATES 

In the United States the seeming paradox of larger out- 
put in shorter hours was clearly stated by the now classic 
report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor in 
1881. Agitation for some sort of legislative protection for 
working children began as early as 1825 in Massachusetts.* 
The first law applying to adult women was not passed until 
1874. Six years after the Massachusetts ten-hour law 
went into effect, a full investigation under Carroll D. Wright 
showed that the cost of production had not been increased, 
nor had wages been lowered under the Massachusetts ten- 
hour day, as compared with the system of eleven hours and 
longer in neighboring states. The worker's increased effi- 
ciency more than balanced the curtailment of working time. 
Massachusetts with ten hours produced "as much per man, 
or per loom or per spindle, equal grades being considered, as 
other states with eleven and more hours, and also . . . 
wages here rule as high, if not higher than in the states where 
the mills run longer time.'^f 

Even before the passage of the Massachusetts act in 
1874, experiments in single mills proved the same result. In 
1867 the Atlantic Mills at Lawrence cut down their working 
day from ten and three-quarters to ten hours. The wages 
were kept the same. Cost of production increased 2^ per 
cent, and the output at first was reduced 4 to 5 per cent; 
yet the treasurer of the company testified before the Massa- 

* Labor Laws and Their Enforcement, with special reference to 
Massachusetts, p. 4. Edited by Susan M. Kingsbury. New York, Long- 
mans, Green and Co., 191 L 

t Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1881, p. 457. 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

chusetts Committee on Labor in 1873 that after three and a 
half years with no change in machinery or in wages, the out- 
put of ten hours was "fully equal" to the output of the pre- 
vious ten and three-quarters hours; the immediate improve- 
ment in the workers was such that the firm considered them 
the "best that have been in the mill for fifteen years/' and 
work was more continuous and less interrupted throughout 
the year than ever before.* 

The favorable operation of the Massachusetts law, re- 
ported in 1881, led to the passage between 1885 and 1887, 
of similar laws in other New England states, — Rhode Island, 
Maine, New Hampshire, and Connecticut,— and greatly in- 
fluenced the trend of legislation in other states. 

During more than a generation which has elapsed since 
Massachusetts took the first step, the well worn argument 
that industry would be ruined or must leave the state, has 
accompanied each advance in American legislation, yet in 
only one case has any law limiting women's hours of work 
been repealed. f Almost every amendment has been by way 
of strengthening the laws and further reducing the workday. t 

This fact is in itself presumptive proof of the economic 
success of these statutes. No one can suppose that indus- 
trial communities, all in comparatively close touch with one 
another and able to observe how the laws were affecting 
"business" in neighboring states, would deliberately con- 
tinue, during more than thirty-six years, to undo their own 
commercial welfare by legislative enactments. Common 
sense refutes the thought. Rather have the opponents of 
legislation tried year by year to minimize and ridicule the 
economic benefits of the shortened day; but in spite of their 
misrepresentation and ridicule, the truth has prevailed. 

* Argument of Hon. Wm. Gray on Petitions for Ten-Hour Law before 
the Massachusetts Committee on Labor, Feb. 13, 1873. 

t The New Jersey law of 1892 providing a ten-hour day and fifty-five- 
hour week for women, was held repealed by the repealing act of 1904, which 
reorganized the New Jersey Department of Labor. 

J The only retrograde action has been the decisions of certain courts 
concerning the constitutionality of laws limiting hours of labor. These are 
discussed in Chap. VI II. 

132 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

In a general way it has gradually become recognized 
that shorter hours improve health, and that improved health 
and efficiency under the short-hour system is the basis of 
higher output.* The greater zest and generally increased 
capacity of the short-hour worker have been contrasted with 
the physical and moral exhaustion of the long-hour worker. 

Can we now learn something more accurate about the 
effects of regulation upon industry today? Can physiology 
interpret for us the relative productivity of long and short 
days, as it has clarified the new strain of manufacture and 
commerce? What has physiology to do with production, 
fatigue with output, today, since the examples of thirty and 
forty years ago are now valuable chiefly for their confirma- 
tion of European experience and the influence which they 
have had upon past legislation? 



3. AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF OUTPUT 

Before taking up the question of output in industrial 
establishments, we may gain some insight from a suggestive 
little investigation made by an Italian physiologist, Professor 
G. Pieraccini of Florence.! This study of output is not at all 
conclusive, since it deals with a very small number of experi- 
ments and workers. It is valuable chiefly in pointing out 
one method for future investigations. No generalizations 
can be based upon a few observations, and the ever variable 
human factor in production makes it a vastly subtle and 
complex question. Indeed, in a certain factory, the mere 
knowledge that they were being examined caused marked 
variations in the output of working girls under observation. 
But Dr. Pieraccini's study is at least an interesting attempt 
to find the relative productivity of the various hours of the 
day in selected employments, and it may well precede our 

* See Part 1 1 of this volume, pp. 339-384. 

t Proceedings of the First International Congress on Industrial Dis- 
eases, Milan, 1906. Pieraccini, G. (Arcispedale di S. M. Nuova, Firenze): 
La Curva della Produzione Utile Esterna Raccolta Negli Operai Manuali 
ed Intellettuali Sul Campo del Lavoro. 

133 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

discussion of such statistics as exist, on the productivity of 
the long and the short day in industry. 

Professor Pieraccini did not use any laboratory appara- 
tus to measure the output of his workers, but compared its 
actual amount and quality at different hours of the day. He 
studied the output of five different kinds of manual workers, 
namely, a copyist, six diggers, four stone-cutters, two bullet 
makers, two nail makers, and ten compositors. The small 
number of experiments reported is somewhat compensated 
by the similarity of their results and their general harmony 
with the knowledge derived from laboratory experiments. 

For just as we have seen diagrammatically in the labora- 
tory, the sequence of treppe, maximum effort, fatigue, and 
exhaustion, so in these experiments we see how working 
capacity increases during the second and third hours of work, 
falling as fatigue gains towards the noon hour, rising again 
slightly after food and rest at noon, to decline more rapidly 
to a minimum in the afternoon. 

The most interesting figures are those given for the 
compositors or typesetters. The amount of their output was 
determined by the number of lines set per hour, while the 
number of typographical errors served to determine the 
quality of their work. The first experiment was made on 
six members of the Typographical Co-operative Society of 
Florence, experienced men working at piece-rates, for seven 
hours in the day. Their output was as follows :* 



OUTPUT OF SIX TYPESETTERS WORKING AT 
SEVEN HOURS A DAY 



PIECE-RATES 



Hours 


8-9 


9-10 


10-11 


11-12 


12-2 


2-3 


S-4 


J^-5 


Total 


121 


151 


130 


125 


Rest 

and 

Lunch 


142 


124 


96 


Average 


20.2 


25.3 


21.6 


20.8 


a 


23.6 


20.8 


16 



* Pieraccini, op. cit,, p. 122, 

134 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

Plotted, the curve is as follows :* 



160 



150 



140 



130 



tzo 



100 



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Similar is the showing made by four typesetters of the 
Niccolai Printing House at Florence. The errors made in- 
crease as work (i. e., the number of lines set) decreases. 
That is, the quality of the work falls just as the amount falls, 
with the increase of fatigue. 



OUTPUT OF FOUR TYPESETTERS, SHOWING INCREASE OF ERRORS 
WITH INCREASE OF FATIGUE 



Hours 


8-9 


9-10 


10-11 


11-12 


12-2 


2-3 


3-4 


4-5 


No. of lines set 


















Total 


84 


104 


92 


86 


Rest 


99 


82 


64 


Average .... 


21 


26 


23 


21.5 


" 


24.7 


20.5 


16 


Errors 


















Total 


17 


10 


18.28 


28 


a 


5.5 


22.6 


30 


Average .... 


4.25 


2.5 


4.57 


7 


a 


1.37 


5.45 


7.5 



Plotted, the curve is as shown in the following chart. 

*ln this chart and the following one A = total output; B = average 
output. 

135 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



inn 








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The other experiments upon the copyists, diggers, stone 
cutters, nail and bullet makers, showed the same general 
results. The practice, or " limbering up,'' gained during the 
first hour of work makes the second and sometimes the 
third hour also the period of maximum production. In 
all cases the lowest output of the morning is reached during 
the hour before the noon rest. Output rises again markedly 
in the first hour of work after the noon rest, but it declines 
much more rapidly in the afternoon than in the morning. 
In no case does the afternoon output equal the morning's 
output in amount. 

Inconclusive as these few figures are, and unsatisfactory 
in that they report total and average amounts of work instead 
of separate, individual amounts per worker, they at any rate 
point clearly to the close connection between the worker's 

136 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

physical condition and his output. The rise in production in 
the first hour after noon marks the recuperative effect of food 
and rest. The lower productivity of the afternoon is the 
perfectly normal result of the worker's physiological fatigue, 
stemmed for a while by the noon break, but growing naturally 
through the functioning of his tissues, until quitting time and 
the night's rest restore the metabolic losses. 

Through all the myriad variations of men's individual 
endowments, these general tendencies persist. Working 
capacity, like all human capacities, eludes perfectly fixed 
rules and measurements. Man's way of working is almost as 
individual as his thumb-print, fast or slow, steady or variable, 
tiring easily or tiring late, with as varying reserves of quite 
unmeasured strength. But all alike are subject to the physio- 
logic laws, and this likeness which links all humankind is 
more fundamental, more important in our industrial inquiry, 
than all the peculiarities which differentiate. 

So much for the underlying principles, and the very 
palpable connection between fatigue and output. As in 
sports the player's game shows whether he is "in form," "in 
trim," " in training," so in a sense, production is no more than 
a measure of the worker's fatigue or equilibrium. Work is 
still conditioned on the worker, in spite of all the marvels of 
modern machinery, planning, equipment, and the rest. And 
as a corollary, work, output, production, must rise or fall 
with the worker's physical fitness for his task. This is what 
we have seen repeatedly illustrated in the laboratory, and 
also in Professor Pieraccini's study analyzed above — a labo- 
ratory experiment transferred, as it were, into the factory. 

Can we not find further confirmation in the actual 
operation of modern industries? Can we point to the rela- 
tive productivity of the long and the short day in actual 
practice — their cash values in dollars and cents? 

Unfortunately, exact data on this subject are meager and 
difficult to get. In this country few reliable and definite 
statistics are to be found. Many experiments in shortening 

137 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the hours of labor in various trades have yielded impressive 
results but have not been made public. 

The increasing use of the stop-watch — a symbol of the 
new planning in industry, its infinitesimal accounting and 
record-keeping — is bound to show more and more new facts 
about men's diurnal efficiencies and the resultant individual 
and total records of output. But these studies, charts, and 
observations are so comparatively new (dating from approxi- 
mately the last decade), and the nature of the results is held 
so confidential, that they have for the most part been kept 
private. Manufacturers are apt to hesitate or entirely re- 
fuse to publish the new saving in time, labor cost, and ma- 
terials which result from new methods of organization. 
They regard them as business secrets, and fear competitors. 
Let us, then, first undertake to examine three wellknown 
and important foreign studies of efficiency which deal with 
conditions sufficiently like our own to be convincing and 
which throw considerable light on the economic effects of 
reducing the length of the workday. 



4. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE SALFORD IRON WORKS AT 
MANCHESTER, ENGLAND 

One of the most conclusive and influential of these ex- 
periments in shortening the day's work was made by the 
firm of Mather and Piatt in 1893 at the Salford Iron Works 
at Manchester, England. This experiment is of particular 
interest because it was carried on during an entire year for 
the express purpose of measuring the effects of reduced hours, 
"to prove how far the widespread desire for shorter hours 
might be met without danger to the mechanical trades.''* 

The full complement of men at the Salford Iron Works 
during the trial year (March 1, 1893, to Feb. 28, 1894) was 
1,200. The character of the work turned out was similar to 
that of the preceding six years; that is, general engineering 

* Mather, Wm., M. P.: The Forty-eight Hours Week: A Year's 
Experiment and its Results at the Salford Iron Works, Manchester. Man- 
chester, 1894. 



138 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

work.* Since the firm was subject to keen competition in 
home and foreign markets, a detailed study was made of the 
effect of shorter hours on the cost of labor. In order to carry 
out the trial with scientific precision and care, extremely ac- 
curate comparisons were made by expert accountants. Mr. 
Mather vouches for the absolutely correct and trustworthy 
nature of the results, while he states that their confidential 
nature makes it impossible to publish all of the figures which 
were later given to the government officials. Previous to 
the trial year, the week's work was first fifty-four and then 
fifty-three hours, and the figures taken as standards with 
which to compare results are the averages, per year, of the 
previous six years. 

The most noteworthy statement in the report is that 
under the forty-eight-hour week production increased.! 
Selling prices, moreover, were lower than in the previous 
years, so that during the trial year the cost of wages in pro- 
portion to "turnover" rose 0.4 per cent. Had selling prices 
remained the same, the cost of wages would have shown a 
decided decrease, instead of an increase of 0.4 per cent. 

This debit against the trial year, however, Mr. Mather 
considers balanced by a saving of 0.4 per cent secured as a 
direct consequence of the shorter hours. The greater econ- 
omy in consumables (gas, electric lighting, wear and tear, etc.) 
was closely figured and set against the increased fixed charges 
due to interest on plant and machinery, rent, taxes, etc. The 
balance of these two accounts was clearly in favor of the trial 
year. " By a remarkable coincidence," it showed a saving of 
0.4 per cent on these items, which exactly counter-balances 
the debit of 0.4 per cent from the increased cost of wages. 

Another item of interest to our special inquiry concerns 

* This "comprised steam engines, pumping machinery, boiler work, 
etc.; all machinery used in those textile trades (other than spinning and 
weaving) for the bleaching, printing and finishing of cotton, linen, silk, and 
other fabrics; electrical machinery of every variety for lighting, trans- 
mission of power, electric traction, electro-depositing, electro-chemical 
processes, etc." Op. cit., p. 5. 

t Op. cit., pp. 17 and 20. (Figures not given.) 

139 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the effect of shorter hours on piece-rates. It was assumed, 
at the outset, that the men on piece-work were doing their 
best, and that their earnings must be lessened by any reduc- 
tion in hours. But though the piece-workers lost slightly 
during the year, their falling off diminished as the year ad- 
vanced, showing a steady adaptation to the altered condi- 
tions of work. In order to judge the effects of the new sys- 
tem on piece-work, the year was divided into three approxi- 
mately equal periods. In the first period, the surplus earned 
by piece-workers over day-work rates was 1.76 per cent less 
than the standard piece-work wages; in the second period it 
was 1.58 per cent less, and in the third it was 0.78 per cent 
less than the standard. This steadily diminishing loss made 
it reasonable to expect that at the end of the year the differ- 
ence would entirely disappear, and that under reduced hours 
the piece-workers would earn exactly as much, hence produce 
as much, as in the longer day's work. Moreover, as the 
total output of the works was greater during the trial year 
than previously, the slight diminution in the piece-worker's 
production was more than compensated by increased produc- 
tion on the part of the day-workers. 

In the light of our previous studies of fatigue and the 
strain upon men's energies in overwork, it is extremely signifi- 
cant that the management of the Salford Iron Works at- 
tributed the maintenance of full production during the trial 
year "solely to the unimpaired and cheerful energy on the 
part of every man and boy throughout the day."* 

"We seem," says the report (and the statement is the 
more impressive because this investigation was not primarily 
concerned with the workers at all, but with the effect of 
shorter hours upon the output of "one of the great staple 
trades of the country" centering in Lancashire and York- 
shire), "we seem to have been working in harmony with a 
natural law, instead of against it. . . . The most econom- 
ical production is attained by employing men only so long 
as they are at their best. When this stage is passed, there 
is no true economy in their continued work."t 

* Italics added. f Op. cit., pp. 25 and 26. 

140 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

As one result of the " unimpaired and cheerful energy " of 
the workers under the forty-eight-hour system, the improve- 
ment in respect to "time lost without leave" is an important 
item. Under the fifty-three-hour system, the proportion of 
such "time lost" to the total time worked averaged 2.46 per 
cent, while under the new arrangement it was only 0.46 per 
cent. This loss of time meant, of course, a serious inroad 
upon production, and the greater "promptitude," "steadi- 
ness," "life and spirit about commencing work," reported 
by the foremen of various departments* aided in bringing 
about the success of the forty-eight-hour week. 

Eleven years after this experiment was tried, the United 
States Bureau of Labor inquired of Messrs. Mather and Piatt 
whether their works were still upon an eight-hour basis, and 
received a reply dated May 24, 1904, stating that "our ex- 
perience since the first year in which it (the eight-hour system) 
was tried has fully borne out the conclusions then arrived at, 
and we are fully satisfied that as regards the comparison be- 
tween eight and nine hours per day, the balance of advantage 
is in favor of the shorter period."! 

An interesting sequel to the success of the forty-eight- 
hour week at the Salford Iron Works was Mr. Mather's de- 
termination, as a matter of public duty, to lay the results 
before the heads of various government departments. The 
then secretary of state for war, Mr. Campbell-Bannerman, 
the first lord of the admiralty, Earl Spencer, and the post- 
master general, Mr. Arnold Morley, invited Mr. Mather to 
explain the workings of the forty-eight-hour week to the 
chiefs of construction from the Woolwich Arsenal Works, and 
to the officials of the dockyards and the post office. 

Subsequently, in 1894, the hours of labor of about 43,000 
work people in government factories and workshops were 
reduced to an average of forty-eight hours in the week. J Of 

* Op. cit., p. 79. 

t Bulletin of the New York State Department of Labor. No. 25, 
June, 1905, p. 240. 

% British Board of Trade Labor Gazette, July, 1905. 
141 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

these, 18,641 workers in war oifice establishments had their 
working time shortened by five and three-quarters hours per 
week.* 

In 1905, eleven years later, the war office stated that 
when the forty-eight-hour week was first introduced, the 
results of experiments tried out in private factories had led 
them to expect a saving in time through the greater prompt- 
ness of men in stopping and re-starting work, a greater regu- 
larity of attendance, and an improvement in the men's 
physical condition, with a consequent increase in working 
capacity. The communication states that 

''these anticipations have been justified and it is clear that 
no extra cost has been incurred by the public on account of 
the reduction of hours, nor has the output of work been 
diminished. On the other hand, the majority of the work- 
men being on piece-work, the average weekly earnings per 
man have not been sensibly altered, although piece-work 
prices have not been increased. The day-workers received 
an increased hourly rate of pay to make their earnings per 
week of forty-eight hours equal to those per week of fifty-four 
hours. It was not found necessary to increase the number 
of day-workers." 

So much for the economic results of the shorter week in 
the army establishments. The testimony from the admiralty 
is less specific and definite. In 1894, 24,263 workers in the 
royal dockyards, the royal naval ordnance department, and 
H. M. victualling yard had their hours reduced to forty-eight 
in the week. In 1905 the admiralty stated that the cost of 
production at the dockyards where most of the workers 
affected by the change were employed, compared favorably 
with the cost previous to the introduction of the forty-eight- 
hour week. But they were unable to state to what extent 
the cost had been affected by the reduction in hours, on ac- 
count of improvements in machinery, changes in the methods 

* This includes the Ordnance Factories, Ordnance Store Dept., 
Inspection Dept., Small Arms Inspection Dept., and Royal Army Clothing 
Dept. 

142 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

of conveying stores within the dockyards, increases of pay in 
certain trades, and the Hke. 

Such, then, was the result of one specific inquiry, frag- 
mentary as it is, at the Salford Works, into the economic 
effects of the shorter workday. The later fruits of the experi- 
ment in shortening the hours of many thousand workers in 
government employ, give it an importance beyond its own 
narrower limits. 

The Salford Iron Works and the government depart- 
ments which followed its lead, settled on the forty-eight-hour 
week as the most profitable working period. Here we should 
state that, in this study of fatigue, we do not hold a brief for 
the eight-hour day, or for a day of any specified number of 
hours. Physiologically considered, even the eight-hour day 
is too long a period of work in some dangerous occupa- 
tions. Sir Thomas Oliver, the leading expert on industrial 
poisoning, has recently reported that " a change from six- to 
eight-hour shifts of employment was in a Scotch factory 
found to be the only explanation of an outbreak of plumbism 
in a works which had hitherto been free."* Moreover, the 
eight-hour day, involving with the noon hour and time taken 
in traveling to and from home usually ten or eleven hours' 
employment, does not leave too great a margin of leisure for 
any persons who are to be citizens of value to the state. 

But for the moment we are not concerned with the claims 
of this or that specified number of working hours. We aim 
merely to answer the questions we have set ourselves in this 
chapter: What has physiology to do with production, fatigue 
with output? Can we learn the relative productivity of the 
long and the short day in operation — their market value? 
The Salford Iron Works and the reduced hours of 43,000 
workers in English government employment have given us 
our first reply. For the next, we turn to a careful Belgian 
investigation of efficiency. 

* Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 95, July, 1911. 
Oliver, Sir Thomas, M.D., F. R. C. P.: Industrial Lead Poisoning in 
Europe, p. 9. 

M3 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



5. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ENGIS CHEMICAL WORKS NEAR 
LIEGE, BELGIUM 

In the year 1888 a joint stock company was formed in 
the Province of Liege, by a group of Belgian manufacturers of 
chemical products. The name of the company was La 
Societe Anonyme des Produits Chimiques d'Engis. Its 
objects were two-fold: the reduction of zinc blend, and the 
simultaneous transformation of the liberated gases into sul- 
phuric acid. The company's plant was located near a zinc 
works, and was designed to replace the latter's open air 
furnaces for the reduction of the blend, by a new system of 
muffled ovens. The old means of reduction (known as 
Freiburg ovens) allowed large volumes of anhydride of sulphur 
to escape, a gas peculiarly destructive to vegetation. The 
Engis Company installed the new system to save the pay- 
ment of heavy damages to the vicinity and the waste of the 
gases liberated in the roasting process. 

Originally, under the old system, work was carried on in 
twenty-four-hour shifts. Workmen were required to remain 
at their ovens from 6 a. m. to 6 a. m. on alternating days. 
Work was intermittent, and during the twenty-four hours on 
duty each man had time-oflf at irregular intervals, amounting 
to about seven hours in the twenty-four. This organization 
of work was naturally found intolerable, leading to inefficiency, 
exhaustion, and drunkenness among the workmen. 

When the new stock company was formed, a twelve- 
hour workday was introduced. Each week the day shifts 
and night shifts alternated, thus providing a twenty-four- 
hour workday and a twenty-four-hour day of rest on alternate 
Sundays. But this schedule of work was also found un- 
satisfactory and inhumane, and after four years a funda- 
mental change was determined upon. L. G. Fromont, the 
engineer who founded the Engis works and was its manager 
for more than a dozen years, has described in detail the final 
reorganization of his labor force from a two-shift to a three- 



144 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

shift basis.* This meant the reduction of the workday from 
ten to eight hours — a change owing not to the demands of 
labor, but to M. Fromont's observation of the exhaustion 
(surmenage) of his workmen. 

The special interest of this account Hes in its statistical 
exactness and detail. Manifestly, in a dangerous occupation 
involving poisonous gases and extremest heat, the danger to 
health arises chiefly from the character of the work. But the 
statistics of output, wages, sick benefits, etc., under the 
twelve-hour and the eight-hour day show convincingly the 
part played by the reduction of hours. 

The constant deficits of the sick benefit fund had become 
alarming. A mutual association had been formed at the 
first foundation of the company. It not only paid for medi- 
cal attendance and drugs, but also a part of the salaries of 
sick workmen during non-employment. Accidents were not 
charged to this fund, as the company had from the beginning 
itself insured its workers against such hazards. But alarm- 
ing as were the deficits of the sick benefit fund, the manage- 
ment was even more concerned by the manifest and daily in- 
creasing physical debility of their workers. (Nous fumes 
bien plus alarme encore de devoir constater, chaque jour, la 
decroissance manifeste de la resistance et de la vaillance de 
nos hommes.) During the heat of the summer a permanent 
relief shift was found necessary, to assist or relieve men over- 
come by exhaustion at the furnaces and incapable of con- 
tinuing their work. 

The chemical works had had considerable difficulty in 
recruiting their force. They needed the strongest and most 
robust of workmen. But in that part of Belgium where the 
Engis plant was situated, the traditional strong man's trade 
was brickmaking. It was a trade bred in the bone of the 
countryside. During the inclemency of winter, the brick- 
makers would betake themselves to other work in mines or 

* Fromont, L. G.: Une Experience Industrielle de Reduction de la 
Journee de Travail. Instituts Solvay. Brussels et Leipzig, Misch et 
Thron, 1906. 

lo 145 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

mills; but with the first harbingers of spring (des que les 
premieres hirondelles ont f aits leur apparition) they were seized 
with a longing for their own trade (la nostalgie du metier) 
and despite promises and good intentions, they were off to 
work in the sun and open air. 

Notwithstanding their superior strength, therefore, the 
Engis Company was compelled to accept workers of inferior 
physique but of steadier working habits than the brickmakers. 
When after four years their labor force showed unmistakable 
signs of failing and breakage, the company considered the 
feasibility of importing a sturdier race of foreign workmen. 
But unlike less scrupulous employers, the suggestion did 
not meet with favor amongst them. It seemed to the man- 
agement unjust to their well-intentioned laborers, as well as 
an unintelligent effort to dodge the difficulty. The true solu- 
tion, M. Fromont felt, lay in imitating the almost incredible 
feats of science (des vertigineux progres de la science) which 
have transformed into servants of the human will the most 
formidable energies and forces of destruction. The com- 
pany's difficulties could not be solved by systematically 
locking out the natural labor supply (le rejet systematique 
de la main-d'oeuvre qui s'offrait a nous), but by attempting 
to modify the hardships of the trade (en essayant d'assouplir 
aux circonstances, les exigences de notre industrie). 

It was for this purpose that the three-shift system was 
introduced and the workday curtailed to eight hours. 

Professor Ernest Mahaim of the University of Liege, a 
prominent Belgian economist, summarizes the results of the 
changes as follows: 

" In the eight-hour day, representing seven and one-half 
hours of actual work, the same workman at the same ovens, 
with the same implements and raw material, produced as 
much as previously in twelve hours, representing ten hours 
of actual work.'' 

How, now, were these results ascertained? They are 
described by M. Fromont with scientific accuracy and con- 

146 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

ciseness in a series of extremely interesting charts (see 
pages 150-154), first communicated in 1897 to the Belgian 
Chemical Society and the Association of Engineers of the 
Liege School.* The probable effect of the reduction of hours 
upon output, wages, etc., was first plotted in advance, and 
then compared with the actual effects of the shortened day. 

The interest of the experiment, says M. Fromont, was 
all the greater because the results of the change could be 
graphically and exactly demonstrated. The output was of a 
kind which could be measured by weight, and the same unit 
of measurement showed the variation of wages, since they 
were fixed by the amount of metal extracted. 

Under the old regime the furnaces were in operation 
twenty hours in the twenty-four and empty four hours, while 
under the new they were in operation twenty-two and one- 
half hours and empty only one and one-half hours. A gain of 
two and one-half hours' time in twenty-four, or 10.5 per cent, 
was thus achieved. In seven and one-half hours' work the 
increase was therefore 

^^^^^^==0.7875 hours=48 minutes. 

What increase of output per man might now be expected 
as a result of this gain in working time? 

While the work was carried on in two shifts, the men 
were on the premises twelve hours, representing ten hours of 
actual work. Their daily output per man was 1000 kilos of 
roasted ore or 100 kilos per hour. Under the new system, 
the men were on the premises eight hours, representing 
seven and one-half hours of actual work. At the old rate of 
production their output would thus be 750 kilos per day. 
But as we have seen, the three-shift system had resulted in a 
gain of two and one-half hours' work in the twenty-four hours. 
Hence it was estimated that during the twenty-four hours a 
proportional increase of output might be expected of 

2.5X100=250 kilos. 

* Bulletin de 1' Association des Ingenieurs sortis de I'Ecole de Liege. 
Seance du 11 juillet, 1897. 

M7 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



Dividing this total gain among the shifts gives 

250 

^-=83 kilos increase for each shift. 

Hence each shift's work was estimated at 750 + 83 = 833 
kilos per seven and one-half hour day of actual work, or 

yy= 111.1 kilos per hour. 

In another way a similar estimate was reached. The 
new three-shift system had resulted in increasing the shaking- 
down of the furnaces by 20 per cent. In reducing the ore, 
any increase of shaking-down favors oxidation and the reduc- 
tion of the blend. Hence a proportional increase of 20 per 
cent in the extraction of metal was to be expected. 

The amount of extracted metal had under the old system 
been 2,000 kilos per day. The daily increase was therefore 
estimated at 

2.000X20 .nni -T 

— ioo— =^^^*^^^- 

Again dividing this estimated daily increase among the 
three shifts gives 

-y- == 134 kilos per shift. 

Hence each shift might be expected to produce 750 + 134 = 884 
kilos of roasted mineral. Taking the round number of 890 
kilos, this would give 

-yy = 118 kilos per hour. 

From these and similar calculations it was determined 
that 830 kilos could easily be reached as the daily minimum, 
and that 890 kilos might reasonably be expected. 

Such were the expectations and estimates of the manage- 
ment. The inauguration of the new system was difficult. 
It was bitterly opposed by the workers. They saw in the 
reduction of hours only a certain curtailment of production 
and lowered wages. The estimated increases were received 
with scornful (le plus meprisant) scepticism. At their pre- 
vious wage of .40 francs per hour, the men were convinced 

148 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

that they would receive only 7.5X40 = 3 francs per day. 
The most energetic measures, together with incessant and 
patient persuasions, were needed to overcome the workers' 
misconceptions and ill-will (eurent fmalement raison du 
mauvais vouloir des ouvriers). They finally yielded to the 
evidence of fact. For little by little, under the new system, 
the daily output increased and the management's estimates 
were not only realized, but surpassed. In less than six 
months after the experiment was inaugurated, the workers 
had equalled in seven and one-half hours the previous output 
of ten hours, and the daily wage for eight hours' work equalled 
the wage previously earned in ten hours. 

Charts I and 1 1 (page 150) show the estimated and actual 
results of the shortened workday. The dotted lines represent 
the estimates, the solid lines the actual achievements. Since 
the output of seven and one-half hours equalled the output of 
ten hours, or 1000 kilos, instead of 890 kilos as expected, we 
obtain in Chart I the curve R M, instead of the estimated 
drop RN. The curve of earnings R'M' in Chart 1 1 is iden- 
tical, wages being paid by the amount of ore extracted, or at 
4 francs per thousand kilos. In both output and earnings the 
increase over estimates accomplished in the eight-hour day 
was 12.4 per cent.* 

Under the old system, the alternation of day and night 
shifts required a double workday of twenty hours by each 
shift on alternate Sundays. The output of this double day 
had never equalled twice the output of the ordinary ten-hour 
day or 2000 kilos, but always fell to 1600 kilos. 

Under the new system, the long Sunday fell to the lot of 
each shift only once in three weeks instead of every fortnight, 
and the double day was fourteen and three-quarters hours 
instead of twenty. It was computed in advance that the 
workers would accomplish twice their daily output of 890 

* Fromont, op. cit., p. 78. 

As regards output HQX IQQ ] 

890 .r. . 

A J AAsyinn = 12.4 pCF CCnt. 

As regards wages 44X100 ^ 

356 J 

149 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 











X 


r4 


cc 


\ 
\ 








s 




\ 

. \ 




• 
















* 


i 


;' ^' 


^_ 






IC 




t 


^> 




















P4 


'Is 


3 


1 ^ 


2 


o 





s 













































a 


V 




















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Tr — 























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o 



U 



50 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

kilos, or 1780 kilos, on the long Sunday, and accordingly 
would earn 7.12 francs. As a matter of fact they increased 
their output on Sunday just as on other days, reaching 2000 
kilos and earning 8 francs. 

Hence in Charts III and IV (page 152) we obtain the 
curves 5 P and S' P\ instead of the estimated curves 5 Q 
and S' Q'. These curves show an increase of 25 per cent, in 
both output and earnings, over the previous results of the 
twelve-hour day.* 

The increase of output and wages per hour, compared to 
what had been expected in advance, is even more striking- 
Instead of producing 118 kilos per hour, the men accomplished 
133 kilos, giving the curve H K and H' and K' instead oi H L 
and H' U in the next two charts. (Charts V and VI, page 
153.) These effects of the eight-hour day were 12.7 per cent 
greater than had been estimated, and Z2>.2>2> per cent greater 
than the output of the twelve-hour day.f 

Another interesting chart shows the effect of the short- 
ened workday upon the mutual sick benefit fund. % As we 
have seen, accidents were not charged to this account; the 
number of contributors remained about the same. Hence 
the progressive increase of receipts over expenditures seemed 
to M. Fromont proof of the beneficial and undeniable (heur- 
euse et incontestable) influence of the eight-hour day. 

The abscissas of the chart represent the years elapsed 
since the foundation of the company. The ordinates repre- 
sent the annual excess of receipts over expenditures. The 
curve npqroahcdefghiklm shows the fluctuations of receipts 



= 25 per cent. 



* Op. cit., p. 78. 

As regards output 400 x 100 

1600 
As regards wages 160 X IQO 
640 J 

t Op. cit., p. 79. 

As regards production 33.33 x IQQ ) 

100 \ -y-y fj 

A J i^i^ax/ino r = 33.33 per cent. 

As regards wages 133.33X108 ^ 

400 J 
t Op. cit., p. 82. See Chart VII, page 154. 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



5s 





'ti^ 




i 




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52 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 















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2 2 



53 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

and expenditures during a series of years. That is, the por- 
tion of the curve below the Hne ox shows that between 1889 
and 1892 expenditures exceeded receipts; the portion of the 
curve above ox shows that subsequent to the introduction of 
the eight-hour day in 1893 the receipts tended to exceed ex- 
penditures progressively. 

The pronounced drop in this line in the years 1895, 1900, 

y 

FRANCS 



5000 








f 


s^ 


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7500 




N. 


/ 


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300 




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IS89 1690 IS9I i09Z IB95 1694 iB99 I«e6 1697 1698 1899 1900 1901 I90Z |tO> IM4 YCAM 

Chart VII 



and 1902 (represented by the peaks, c, h, and k) is ascribed by 
M. Fromont to the epidemics of influenza which raged during 
those winters. He concludes that without exaggeration 
(sans pouvoir etre taxe d'exageration) the improvement in 
health under the eight-hour system may be called progressive, 
as represented by the dotted line ohMefgNlm. 

154 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

In addition to this graphic chart, M. Fromont bears 
eloquent testimony to the new spirit of sobriety and self- 
respect which accompanied the shortened workday. Pre- 
viously the strong stimulant of drink was found a daily 
necessity. The men's wives themselves provided it in the 
mornings (les malheureuses inconscientes) hoping to help 
their husbands to "repair themselves/' in the picturesque 
language of the countryside (" se refaire des forces," suivant 
I'expression pittoresque des ouvriers). With the shorter 
workday the clandestine drinking in the factory was aban- 
doned, and even outside of working hours drunkenness al- 
most totally ceased. The men also acquired the habit of 
invariably washing and changing their clothes before leaving 
the factory — signs of a new personal self-respect. 

Finally, M. Fromont describes in detail the effect of the 
reduction of hours upon the cost of production. Without 
reproducing his detailed statistics,* it suffices to state here 
that the overhead charges per ton of roasted ore fell 33.33 
per cent. The total cost of production fell 20 per cent. Thus 
in the new organization of work technical perfection was not 
sacrificed nor neglected. The amount and quality of the 
output improved progressively, together with the moral and 
physical improvement of the labor force. 



6. THE EXPERIENCE OF THE ZEISS OPTICAL WORKS 
AT JENA, GERMANY 

We have purposely left to the last, for our fullest analy- 
sis, Ernst Abbe's classic study of the famous Zeiss Optical 
Works at Jena, Germany. This is, for our purposes, the 
most significant and valuable study of efficiency ever pub- 
lished, because Abbe, himself a physicist, university pro- 
fessor, and inventor of first rank, and the owner of a world- 
famous manufacturing plant, found himself driven to the 
conclusion almost naively stated by Mr. Mather when he 
wrote about the shortened workday: "We seem to have 

* Op. cit., pp. 87-96. 
155 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

been working in harmony with a natural law, instead of 
against it/' 

Abbe's social contributions were unique. They have 
received scant notice in this country, but abroad they are 
famous. Since his death in 1905, scarcely a serious review or 
scientific journal in Germany has failed to publish an appre- 
ciation of him (als Sozial Politiker); of his social schemes as 
well as his inventions in applied optics; and of his creation 
and endowment of the great Carl Zeiss Foundation at Jena, 
a model industrial organization. 

Here we must confine ourselves to Abbe's remarkable 
study of industrial efficiency, set forth in two lectures before 
the Society for Political Economy of Jena in 1901.* Abbe 
died before he had opportunity to complete the more thorough 
(griindlich) study of efficiency which he had planned. He 
was certain that no thinking person (kein Denkender) could 
fail to be convinced by the relentless logic which links effi- 
ciency and the length of the workday. In the two lectures 
which he has left on the subject the reader is constantly im- 
pressed with this logical treatment of the argument. It is 
based on no a priori judgments, but deduced step by step, by 
a trained scientist, from thirty years' observations of a great 
industrial plant. 

Abbe was born in 1840, the son of a hard working Saxon 
spinner. At Jena and Gottingen he managed to study the 
sciences, chiefly mathematics and physics. Later he be- 
came docent at Jena, and in 1870 was appointed full pro- 
fessor. He continued to lecture on physics and astronomy 
and to direct the astronomical observatory until his retire- 
ment in 1889. 

Twenty years or more before he retired from the Uni- 
versity, Abbe had become interested in, and had devoted his 
best efforts to problems of applied optics in the works of 
Carl Zeiss at Jena, where the construction of microscopes, 

* Gesammelte Abhandlungen von Ernst Abbe, Bd. Ill, 1906. Die 
Volkswirtschaftliche Bedeutung der Verkiirzung des Industriellen Arbeits- 
tages, 2 Vortrage gehalten in der Staatswissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft zu 
Jena, 1901. 

156 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

telescopes, and other lenses was being technically perfected. 
In 1875 Abbe entered the firm of C. Zeiss, and after the 
latter's death in 1888 conducted the business alone until 
1896, when he handed over the management to his carefully 
constituted Carl Zeiss Foundation, remaining one of the 
directors until ill health forced him to retire a year or two 
before his death. 

These bare facts of Abbe's career indicate how he was 
equipped to deal with the — to him — astonishing results in 
the efficiency of his workmen, when the workday at the Zeiss 
Works was abruptly changed in 1900 from nine to eight hours, 
a reduction of 10 per cent at one stroke. 

When Abbe entered the Zeiss firm in 1870, the workday 
had been twelve hours long. It was gradually reduced, reach- 
ing nine hours in 1891. Nine years later it was further 
shortened to eight hours, for the same purpose as at the 
Salford Iron Works described above; that is, to discover the 
effect on output. The trial at the Zeiss Works was also 
limited to one year. 

Abbe was familiar with the British experiments in re- 
ducing the length of the workday, and had been particularly 
impressed by the experience of the Woolwich Arsenal in 
changing from nine to eight hours without loss or decrease 
in output. The general similarity and consensus of English 
experience on the benefits of the short day to output, organ- 
ization, and invention seemed to Abbe presumptive evidence 
of its truth. But he realized that specific statistical proofs of 
increased efficiency under the eight-hour regime were still 
needed, and he published the careful records and statistics of 
the Zeiss Works precisely to corroborate more exactly the 
general principles empirically learned in British mills and 
factories. 

The effects of the change from nine to eight hours were 
measured by comparing the earnings of piece-workers during 
the year before and the year after the change. In order to 
make the comparison as accurate as possible and to eliminate 
chance variations, great care was taken to omit all workers 

157 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

whose output might have been affected by special individual 
causes. The comparison was limited to workers who had 
been in the firm's employ four years, and who were over 
twenty-two years old. All workers were ruled out who had 
lost more than 300 hours during the year on account of sick- 
ness or other reasons. About 20 others were not counted 
because their health seemed below par. This left 233 work- 
men whose work during the trial year could fairly be com- 
pared with the year before and could be expected to show the 
effect of the reduction of hours. Thanks to the careful 
system of accounting, showing for years back the daily indi- 
vidual earnings of men at piece- and time-work, the follow- 
ing figures were available.* 



COMPARISON OF HOURLY EARNINGS OF 233 PIECE-WORKERS 
IN THE ZEISS OPTICAL WORKS. 

In the last year of the Nine-Hour System (April 1, 1899-April 1, 
1900) and in the first year of the Eight-hour System (April 1, 
1900-April 1, 1901) 



Year 


Total number Piece- 
work Hours 


Earnings 
{in Marks) 


Earnings per 
Mr. {in Pf) 


Ratio of 
Increase 


1899-1900 
1900-1901 


559,169 
.Average per man 2400 

509,599 
Average per man 2187 


345,899 
366,484 


61.9 
71.9 


100:116.2 



Now if the men, in eight hours, had earned exactly the 
same as in nine hours, piece prices remaining the same, then 
hourly earnings would have had to increase in the ratio of 
8 : 9 or 100 : 112.5. But as a matter of fact, the hourly 
earnings increased in the ratio of 100 : 116.2. During the 
trial year, therefore, wages were more than equal to those of 
the previous year. There was an increase, as shown above, 
of 3 per cent. This means that in eight hours the daily out- 
* Op. cit., p. 246. 

.58 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

put was one-thirtieth more than in nine hours. In other 
words, during the trial year 30 men did the work that 31 men 
had done previously. Each man did ten days' more work 
during the year of shorter hours. 

This increase in efficiency was not confined to any one 
class of workers, nor was it particularly influenced by the 
ages of the workers. The following table shows the ages of 
the 233 workers under discussion, and how nearly uniform 
was their increase in eificiency in the shorter day. 

INCREASE IN EFFICIENCY UNDER THE EIGHT-HOUR DAY OF 233 

PIECE-WORKERS AT THE ZEISS OPTICAL WORKS. 

CLASSIFIED BY AGES 

(Ages were reckoned from April 1, 1900. Length of service rec- 
koned according to years spent in the firm's employ after the 
eighteenth birthday) 



Ages 


No. of 
Work- 
men 


Average 
Ages 


Average 
Length 
Service 


Average Piece- 
Rate Earnings 
per Hour in Pf. 


Ratio of 




9Hr. 
Day 


8 Mr. 
Day 




22-25 

25-30 

30-35 

35-40 

Over 40.... 


34 
69 
69 
40 
21 


23.5 
27.3 
32.2 
37.7 
45.3 


5.5 

7.9 

10.1 

12.7 

15.3 


55.3 
62.2 
65.1 
60.6 
63.3 


65.2 
72.6 
74.8 
70.2 
74.3 


100 
100 
100 
100 
100 


117.9 
116.7 
114.9 
115.8 
117.4 


Total.... 


233 


31.6* 


9.6t 


61.9 


71.9 


100 : 116.2 



Maximum 53, minimum 22 years. f Maximum 33, minimum 4 years. 



A second classification divides the 233 workers in ques- 
tion according to their special kinds of work. It shows that 
the efficiency of all increased in about the same proportion, 
though the work ranged from the most delicate and highly 
skilled technical processes to the ordinary operations of wood- 
turning, polishing, etc. 

159 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



INCREASE IN EFFICIENCY OF THE 233 WORKERS. — CLASSIFIED 
BY OCCUPATION 



Occupation 




1 


II 


Earnings 

PER Hour 

IN Pf. 


Ratio of 


9Hr. 
Day 


8Hr. 
Day 


Increase 


Optical Operations: 
1. Lense-setters: Fine hand 
work 


21 
20 

59 
19 

22 
20 
23 

17 
5 
6 

15 
6 

233 


31.1 
33.2 

26.1 
32.1 

31.7 
36.9 

35.2 

34.7 
27.2 
36.2 
35.2 
30.4 


12.7 
13.8 

7.5 
5.8 

8.2 
11.6 
11.1 

11.2 
6.8 
9.7 

10.5 
6.4 

9.6 


72.8 
79.1 

60.4 

52.2 

65.5 
66.6 
57.6 

53.8 
56.1 
56.4 
52.3 

55.7 


84.9 
86.5 

70.5 
62.0 

76.7 
78.5 
68.0 

63.3 
66.9 
64.8 
62.9 
62.8 


100 • 116 6 


2. Microscope grinders, etc. 

3. Other hand grinders and 

centerers, entirely 
hand work 


100 : 109.4 
100 : 116.7 


4. Machine grinders, en- 

tirely machine work . 
Mechanical and Auxiliary 
fVork: 

5. Adjusting rooms, en- 

tirely hand work. . . . 

6. Mounting rooms, chiefly 

hand work 


100 : 118.8 

100 : 117.1 
100 : 117.9 


7. Turning and milling, en- 

tirely machine work. 

8. Polishers and lacquer- 

ers, entirely hand 
work 


100 : 118.1 
100 : 117.7 


9. Engraving, entirely 
hand work 


100 : 119.3 


10. Molders, entirely hand 
work 


100 : 114.9 


11. Carpenters, part hand, 

part machine 

12. Case makers, chiefly 

hand work 


100 : 120.3 
100 : 112.7 








31.6 


61.9 


71.9 


100 : 116.2 



The most interesting fact that emerges from this table 
is that the largest increase in efficiency occurred in the coarser 
kinds of work. Groups 4, 7, and 11, which comprise almost 
entirely machine workers, showed the greatest improvement. 
Only one small group of 20 workers, highly skilled hand grind- 

i6o 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

ers, did not produce or earn as much in eight hours as in 
nine. They failed by 3 per cent. 

One more table of figures, and we can turn to the argu- 
ment which Abbe based upon his statistics. He sought for 
corroboration of the astonishing fact that eight hours' work 
not only equalled but exceeded nine hours' work, and he 
found it in a perfectly objective standard of measurement; 
that is, the amount of power used during the four weeks be- 
fore and four weeks after the introduction of the eight-hour 
day. 

The 650 different machines in the Zeiss Works were 
driven by one central dynamo (not connected with the light- 
ing). The amount of power used was determined by hourly 
readings of a wattmeter. In regard to the expenditure of 
power, Abbe makes a distinction between the actual amount 
used, when it is transmitted and the machines are in operation 
(der eigentliche Nutzeffect), and the so-called "waste" of 
power, when the plant is "running dead,'' as it is called; that 
is, when power is turned on and available but the machines 
are not in use, — as just before work begins, etc. (der so- 
genannte Leergang). 

The wattmeter readings showed that during the last 
four weeks of the nine-hour system, the average amount of 
power transmitted per hour was 49.2 kilowatts. By a special 
contrivance it was shown that during this time, the hourly 
"waste of power" (the plant "running dead") was about 
half the total use, that is, 26 k. w. Thus the actual amount 
of power used averaged 23.2 k. w. per hour. After the 
eight-hour day was introduced the amount of power trans- 
mitted rose from 49.2 k. w. to 52 k. w. per hour. The 
actual amount used rose from 23.2 k. w. to 26.0 k. w. per 
hour; that is, in the ratio of 100 : 112. This shows that 
eight hours' work just equalled the previous nine hours' work, 
since, as we have seen before, for our mathematical basis, 
8 : 9 = 110 : 112.5. 

But in effect, in many of the operations, the output not 
only equalled but exceeded that of the previous nine-hour 
II i6i 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

regime; and the wattmeter readings proved this also. For 
the majority of the machines in the works (three-fourths of 
them) were not wholly automatic. They were machines 
which the workers used like tools, using more or less power 
according to their intensity of application, by shortening 
pauses between operations, pressing more or less heavily in 
grinding and polishing, and in similar ways. 

Hence the increased amount of power used in the eight- 
hour day, as shown by the hourly readings, was to be ascribed 
not to all the machines, but to three-quarters of the machines 
only. The ratio of increase for these, where the men regu- 
lated the amount of power used, was larger than the given 
figure of 100 : 112 which included all the machines. For 
three-quarters of the machines, the ratio of increase was 
higher; that is, as 100 : 116. In other words, they exceeded 
in eight hours by 3 per cent the output of the nine-hour day, 
confirming the conclusion previously proved by the earnings 
of the piece-workers. 

Such being the evidence of cold statistics, the man of 
science in Abbe began to search for the causes. He examined 
the external conditions of work during the trial year and the 
year before. They had not markedly varied. The demand 
for Zeiss products and the consequent pressure at the works 
had been the same. There had been no extremes of heat or 
cold in the seasons, which, as he found, sometimes affect the 
output of highly skilled mechanics. In fact, the workers had 
for the most part been unconscious of their increased in- 
tensity of work. Many would not believe that they had 
produced more in eight hours than in nine until shown the 
proof. The figures showing the weekly amount of power 
used confirmed what Abbe learned direct from the men. 
Some had begun to work with feverish intensity when the 
new day was introduced, but had given it up in disgust after 
the first week, finding the effort exhausting. During the 
second week the output of these workers had consequently 
fallen below the nine-hour day; but by the third or fourth 
week they had recovered their normal pace, and unknown to 

162 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

themselves, were equalling and surpassing the work of the 
longer day. 

Abbe concluded that the adaptation of the worker to 
the shorter day, his intensity of application, was largely 
automatic, and did not depend primarily on his good or ill 
will. This was proved also by the firm's previous experience 
with overtime. Under the nine-hour regime, the men had 
been required to work one hour overtime at seasons of pres- 
sure. But it had been found that their efficiency did not keep 
up for any length of time. It fell off in about two weeks, in 
spite of the men's evident desire to earn the 25 per cent higher 
wages of overtime. One November Abbe himself had tried 
the experiment, when the men were eager to earn more just 
before Christmas. But the result was the same. The out- 
put of overtime deteriorated in one week, and by the third 
or fourth week it was practically nil. 

Deeper than good or ill will, then, must lie the causes for 
men's variation of efficiency in the long and the short day. 
Some common factors must explain it, common to men as 
widely diverse in capacities and nationalities as the machine- 
shop workers and miners of Northumberland and Durham 
and the Thuringian lense grinders and mechanics. 

These common factors Abbe found in precisely the two 
causes to which we have devoted so much attention: the 
laws governing man's physiologic nature, and the new strain 
of industry. 

We need not repeat here Abbe's admirable physiological 
analysis. He showed how the vague subjective conception of 
fatigue and repair rests upon objective measurable metabolic 
changes within the human body; and he concluded that the 
workman whose daily deficits, however small, are allowed to 
stand from day to day, cannot in the end escape bankruptcy. 

Some of Abbe's keenest remarks deal with the simplest 
facts — ^facts so simple that everyone has always known them, 
and has lost sight of their significance through very famil- 
iarity. But the keen mind can still pluck out the inner sig- 
nificance of words and facts that have become mere " polished 

163 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

surfaces" of commonplace for the rest of us. Thus Abbe 
showed how, owing to the minute sub-division of modern 
labor, the workman incurs a certain amount of perfectly 
passive fatigue, irrespective of his actual production. The 
modern worker performs only one repeated operation or the 
fragment of an operation in the construction of a whole. He 
sits or stands hour after hour in exactly the same unchanged 
attitudes, unvaryingly subjected to the same noise, and the 
same need of attention (to guard himself and others) when 
he works with moving machinery. These things would be 
extremely fatiguing, even if no work were to be performed, 
and in the ten-hour day the workman has to endure daily 
two hours more of such purely passive fatigue, without there- 
by accomplishing any more work than in the eight-hour day. 
It is as unreasonable, says Abbe, as though the employer 
said to his workmen: "You may fmish your work in eight 
hours, but then you must remain two hours longer, standing 
or sitting, in the same limited attitudes, hearing the same 
roar, exerting the same effort of attention, but doing no 
work.'* 

Moreover, since the metabolic equilibrium is regained 
only by rest and recuperation, the length of working hours 
is of critical importance. The rate of recuperation depends 
clearly upon many variables — age, state of health, state of 
mind, food, and the like. But the short day gives, at least, 
the best chances of repair to those parts of the organism 
most exerted in work, and while after ten hours' work there 
are but fourteen left for all the other purposes of life, after 
eight hours' work there are sixteen left. 

Finally, as to the greater intensity of work in the short- 
ened day. Abbe explained it also in physiological terms. 
Good will or ill will does not, in the end, aflFect the matter. 
Within certain limits the workman adapts himself auto- 
matically to the shortened day by increasing his speed and 
his effort, without noticeably increasing his exertions, just as 
one can walk a mile somewhat faster or somewhat slower 
without appreciable difference. The short workday makes 

164 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

this closer application possible without injury to the organism, 
by allowing the worker more time off for tissue repair between 
working days, and by eliminating so much of the "passive 
fatigue" which we have discussed above. Every one has a 
maximum or optimum of production, when he accomplishes 
most in the shortest time, and the reduction of hours is 
followed by increased efficiency up to the point where the 
greater speed and intensity, automatically acquired, over- 
passes physiological limits. When the worker's natural 
adaptation to the shorter day is not sufficient, so that pressure 
and effort must spur him to accomplish too large a task in 
too short a time, the benefits of reduced hours are lost. For 
the excessive intensity of effort costs the worker more than 
is repaired by the longer space of time allowed off for recup- 
eration. 

Just where each man's maximum lies, when he can ac- 
complish most in the shortest time without injury to himself, 
Abbe thought essentially a matter of special investigation. 
But he concluded, from his own extended observations and 
from the experience of others in Germany and England, that 
for about three-fourths of the industrial workers of Germany 
nine hours was too long a day in which to reach their maxi- 
mum and eight hours not too short to reach it. He therefore 
recommended a program still commonly held radical — the 
gradual reduction of the workday not to nine but to eight 
hours for German industries, in the interests of economic 
development and of greater national efficiency. 

Abbe made this recommendation before the era of 
Germany's greatest industrial successes, before the Germans 
had, as an expert on industrial efficiency writes,* "advanced 
their industrial condition, which twenty years ago was a jest, 
to the first place in Europe if not in the world" by realizing 
" the supreme importance of efficiency as an economic factor." 
But ten years ago Abbe had a keen eye for Germany's then 
growing rivalry with British industries, and he foresaw that 

* Gantt, H, L.: Work, Wages and Profits, page 179. Published by 
The Engineering Magazine, New York, 1910. 

.65 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the secret of ultimate success lay in the development of 
greater national efficiency. Germany's most valuable cap^ 
ital seemed to him the intelligence and initiative of her work- 
ing people, a buried treasure. And he urged the develop- 
ment of that capital, — the enfranchisement of the capacities 
of the nation, — by all the resources of science and education. 
He felt certain that a wiser organization of industry should 
allow the workers a wider margin of leisure and time for 
development away from the inevitably deadening monotony 
of minutely sub-divided labor. 

Germany had been spared, he said, the worst conse- 
quences of unregulated industrial expansion. The ten-hour 
agitation in England, preceding and following the bill of 
1847, which fixed a normal day for women and children in 
textile mills and thereby reduced the hours of men in the 
same mills, kindled a light which had illuminated all Europe 
(der Widerschein des Lichtes — in England — hat ganz Europa 
erleuchtet). Abbe himself had seen the reflection of that 
light in the early 50's. For as a young child, he had seen his 
father, an old man at thirty-eight, working sixteen hours a 
day in a Thuringian spinning mill. The British Ten Hours 
Bill first greeted by employers as the death knell of industry, 
and as the signal for British capital to migrate to other lands 
(a fable how often resurrected since that date !) soon showed 
its true results. German mills, including the one in which 
Abbe's father worked, soon followed the English precedent 
and gradually reduced their hours from sixteen to eleven per 
day. 

Thus Abbe knew of his own experience what the short- 
ened day meant to the laborer and his family. He always 
looked upon industrial problems as a son of the people, as 
well as an owner and capitalist (mit dem Auge des Arbeit- 
sohnes, dem nicht unter der Hand Unternehmer — und Kap- 
italistenaugen wachsen wollten).* And his many-sided 
experience crystallized into a belief that to develop Germany's 
flesh and blood capital, one of the most important needs was 
* Abbe, op. cit., p. 4, 

1 66 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

to compress work into as few hours as possible without over- 
strain or impaired efficiency, so as to widen the ranges of 
leisure and development. 



7. THE TREND TOWARD SHORTER HOURS IN THE 
UNITED STATES 

We have concentrated our attention upon these three 
examples of reduced hours — English, Belgian and German — 
because they are specific and are to some degree substantiated 
by detailed statistics. A host of other less specific examples 
might be cited from a wide range of industries in which 
working hours have been successfully shortened without 
financial disaster. The testimony of employers and manu- 
facturers, showing how efficiency has risen and output flour- 
ished when the workday has been reduced to nine and even 
to eight hours, may be found detailed in various volumes de- 
voted to this topic* These include industries employing 
men alone, and industries employing women alone, and those 
which employ both sexes; industries mechanical, textile, and 
chemical; trades as diverse as mining and the manufacture 
of jams; shoe making and ship building; hardware, glass, 
bottle making and cigar making; printing and the structural 
trades. 

We do not here refer at length to Australasia's half 
century of success with the short workday. In 1856 the 
eight-hour day was introduced in the Australian building 
trades by trade union agreements. Since that time the 
movement has widened and steadily grown, until now it em- 
braces practically all but the manual workers in clothing and 
other domestic industries. But a small and distant colony 
is, as regards trade and commerce, in too isolated a position 
to be of much practical concern in our discussion. The Aus- 

* Some of the best popular books on this subject are: Webb, Sidney, 
and Cox, H.: The Eight Hours Day. London, W. Scott, 1891. Hadfield 
and Gibbons: A Shorter Working Day. London, Methuen and Co., 1892. 
Rae, John: Eight Hours for Work. London, Macmillan and Co., 1894. 
Weber, Adna T.: The Eight Hours Movement. In Report of the New 
York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1900. 

167 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

tralian industries which affect the world market are chiefly 
agricultural and stock raising. Hence the Australian eight- 
hour day has had little significance in world competition. 
The experience of Australasia in maintaining a workday 
shorter than the rest of the world is in itself a chapter of deep 
interest, but we cannot generalize from these facts as we can 
from facts and figures of a society more nearly akin to our own. 

We are, indeed, so largely thrown back upon facts and 
figures from other countries because our own are the most 
meager and least satisfactory of any industrial nation. No 
American studies of output have been published which can 
compare with the three which we have analyzed above.* 

The chief confirmation which our country affords of the 
point we have been examining in detail, — the effect upon out- 
put of the shortened workday, — is the actual movement of 
industry in the direction of shorter hours, a movement not 
merely in posse, but for some time past in esse, existent. 

We have already pointed out that during the past thirty- 
six years there has been a continuous, although very slow, 
movement towards shorter working hours for women, se- 
cured through legislation in their behalf. There has been 
also a slow but certain march towards shorter hours in men's 
employments, especially where strong organizations of work- 
ing men deal collectively with their employers through trade 
agreements. But here we face an extraordinary paradox! 
For while working men are bargaining for and obtaining the 
eight-hour day in many of the great trades throughout the 
country, women and the laws in their behalf limp in the rear, 
still for the most part aiming at a ten-hour working day. 
Eight hours for men, ten hours for women and girls, — an 
ironic commentary on the cast of our society. 

* For an interesting reference to a successful American experiment 
in reducing the workday see Tlie Steel Workers by John A. Fitch, p. 180. 
(The Pittsburgh Survey. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, 
Charities Publication Committee, 1911.) In 1904, the Sharon Steel Hoop 
Co., at Sharon, Pa., reduced the hours of about 150 men engaged in the 
finishing mills from ten to eight hours. The tonnage turned out is said to 
have remained the same, and the general opinion in Sharon was in all ways 
favorable to the shorter day. 

1 68 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

In this instance the discrimination against women is 
particulafly paradoxical, because for many years the only 
effective reduction of men's hours of work came through the 
laws reducing women's hours. Men who worked in textile 
mills with women, shared all the benefits of the long ten- 
hour agitation in England and America. They were and 
are automatically dismissed with the women at the close of 
the ten-hour day. This automatic though tacit inclusion of 
the men has been recognized since the beginnings of leg- 
islation, and at various times the laws for women were 
most hotly opposed by those who resented that workingmen 
were obtaining indirectly, "skulking behind the petticoats,'* 
a protection which they could not secure openly for them- 
selves.* 

Yet in the great trades which during the past twenty- 
five years have reduced the workday to nine or to eight 
hours, — such as the cigar makers, the carpenters and builders, 
the printers, granite cutters and brewers, — few if any women 
share the benefit. 

If the short day were the enemy of production, as its 
opponents assert, and actually led to a lowered output in the 
long run, the progress towards an eight-hour day in the great 
men's trades would long since have broken down. No trade 
could persist and grow which was permanently carried on at 
a loss. The trend towards the shortened workday has been 
retarded by the mistakes of trade unions as well as by the 
greed of employers; but it is a fact and proceeds today only 
because, whether recognized or not, it is in harmony with the 
elemental facts which have emerged from our study; because 
economic efficiency rises and falls with the worker's physical 
efficiency, and whatever contributes to the latter tends to 
raise the former. 

The United States Industrial Commission appointed by 

Congress in 1898, which sat for almost four years hearing 

evidence from 700 witnesses on capital, labor, agriculture, 

and immigration, devoted considerable attention in its final 

* Webb, Sidney, and Cox, H.: The Eight Hours Day, p. 20. 

169 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

report* to the economic effects of reducing the workday. 
It is certain, says the report, that any program for reducing 
the intensity of exertion must fail. 

"The entire tendency of industry is in the direction of 
an increased exertion. . . . This being true, there is but 
one alternative if the working population is to be protected 
in its health and trade longevity, namely, a reduction of the 
hours of labor." 

The commission found that : 

" In all cases where reductions have been brought about 
there have been strenuous objections and alarming predic- 
tions, but after a very brief period of trial these objections 
have disappeared, except where lack of uniformity remains a 
ground of complaint; and employer and employe, with this 
exception, alike have agreed upon the advantages of the 
change." f 

The best example of the effects of shorter hours on 
output deals with bituminous coal mining. A table was 
compiled from the report of the United States Geological 
Survey and from the Illinois Commissioners of Labor show- 
ing the production of bituminous coal for the six years 1895 
to 1900. 

The eight-hour day was introduced in the bituminous 
fields during the latter three months of 1897. From this 
table we see that, during the two years 1895 and 1896 under 
the ten-hour system, the average output for the country at 
large for each working man per day was 2.9 and 2.72 tons; 
while in 1897, during the latter three months of which the 
eight-hour day prevailed, the average output per man rose 
to 3.03 tons per day, and during 1898, 1899, and 1900 (three 
years of the eight-hour day, in the majority of the coal mines) 
the average output ranged from 2.98 to 3.09 tons. Each 
year of the eight-hour day shows for the country as a whole 
a larger output per day for each workman than the highest 
output of the ten-hour day. 

* Final Report of the Industrial Commission, 1902. Vol. XIX, p. 764. 
t Ibid., p. 774. 

170 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 
PRODUCTION OF BITUMINOUS COAL IN THE UNITED STATES, 

1895-1900* 



Year 



1894 
1895 
1896 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 



1894 
1895 
1896 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 



1894 
1895 
1896 
1897 
1898 
1899 
1900 



Output, 
Short tons 



39,912,463 
50,217,228 
49,557,453 
54,417.974 
65,165,133 
74,150,175 
79,842,326 



Aver- 
age 
days 
active 



165 
206 
206 
205 
229 
245 
242 



Average 

number 

employed 



Total days 
worked 



Average 
output 

per day. 
Short 
tons 



118,820,405 


171 


135,118,193 


194 


137,640,276 


192 


147,609,985 


196 


166,592,023 


211 


193,321,987 


234 


212,513,912 


234 



11,909,856 


136 


13,355,806 


176 


12,875,202 


161 


12,196,942 


148 


14,516,867 


169 


16,500,270 


200 


18,988,150 


215 



Country at Large 
244,603 
239,962 
244,171 
247,817 
255,717 
271,027 
304,975 



Ohio 
27,105 
24,644 
25,500 
26,410 
26,986 
26,038 
27,628 

Pennsylvania 
75,010 
71,130 
72,625 
77,272 
79,611 
82,812 
92,692 



Per cent 
mined by 
machines 



41,827,113 


2.84 


46,232,628 


2.90 


46,808,832 


2.72 


48,572,132 


3.03 


53,956,287 


3.09 


63,420,318 


3.05 


71,364,150 


2.98 



3,686,280 


3.24 


4,337,344 


3.08 


4,105,500 


3.13 


3,908,680 


3.12 


4,560,634 


3.18 


5,207,600 


3.17 


5,940,020 


3.19 



12,376,650 


3.22 


14,652,780 


3.43 


14,960,750 


3.31 


15,840,760 


3.44 


18,230,919 


3.57 


20,288,940 


2.66 


22,431,464 


3.56 



19.17 
16.19 
20.39 
23.00 
25.15 



26.16 
31.51 
35.76 
41.35 
46.53 



12.29 
16.40 
25.34 
29.67 
33.65 









Illinois 








1894 


16,429,032 


183.1 


35,398 


6,481,527 


2.53 




1895 


17,026,429 


182.2 


35,539 


6,475,315 


2.63 




1896 


18,995,160 


186.0 


34,069 


6,336,915 


3.00 


19.57 


1897 


19,365,847 


185.5 


31,084 


5.766,260 


3.36 


19.66 


1898 


17,885,327 


174.7 


32,223 


5,629,518 


3.17 


18.36 


1899 


22,497,067 


205.7 


34.031 


7,000.324 


3.21 


24.90 


1900 


24,147,771 


214.0 


36,233 


7.753.921 


3.11 


19.73 



The table also shows the increase in the use of machinery 
in coal mining. But it must not be assumed that the in- 
creased use of machinery is responsible for the larger daily 
*0p. cit., pp. 770-771. 
171 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

output of coal for each workman. In one state, Illinois, the 
proportion of coal mined by machines remained fairly con- 
stant; yet, comparing the two years of the ten-hour system, 
1895 and 1896, with the three eight-hour years, 1898, 1899, 
and 1900, it can be seen that the output for each workday 
has increased considerably. The ten-hour years have an 
average output per day for each employe of 2.53 to 3 tons; 
while under the eight-hour system the three years, 1898 to 
1900, show an average of 3.11 to 3.21 tons. This, says the 
report : 

". . . must be ascribed solely to the increased energy 
and promptness of the workman, since, as already stated, 
the proportion of coal mined by machinery in that state has 
remained constant. . . . These tables bring statistical 
evidence to support the testimony of witnesses before the 
Industrial Commission that in the industry of coal mining 
the shorter working day has increased the efficiency of both 
the workmen and the management.*' 

An interesting point brought out by the commission 
is the incentive to invention and greater economy on the 
part of the employes under the short-hour system. When 
working hours are diminished, the loss in time tends to be at 
least in part compensated, almost automatically, by time and 
labor saving methods of production, as well as by increased 
energy on the part of the workers. Doubtless it is true that a 
good machine often will not run faster in eight hours than 
in ten hours, but new machines and new devices are con- 
tinually invented to improve upon the old. As the commis- 
sion pointedly says: 

" While a particular machine will not go faster in eight 
hours than in ten hours, the substitute for that machine, 
which the eight-hour day presses upon the employer to adopt, 
will go faster. Less hours in this way have an indirect as 
well as a direct compensating effect. Not only do they make 
it possible for the workman to keep up his intensity of per- 
sonal exertion during each hour of the day and to work more 
days at a high rate of speed, but they cause the employer to 

172 



ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

economize his labor at every point and to improve its quality 
by better selection/' 

Moreover, it must be borne in mind that some of the 
most useful and time saving inventions and adaptations of 
machinery have not come from scientific laboratories. They 
have been invented by American mechanics themselves in 
the course of their work — work whose intensity was not so 
great as to destroy all the initiative and nervous vitality 
which has been in the past associated with the American 
mechanic and workman. The shortened workday, there- 
fore, in this connection, has a double advantage. On the 
one hand, it offers a premium on labor saving devices to com- 
pensate for the actual curtailment of working time. On the 
other hand, it preserves in the workman that handiness and 
mental alertness from which have sprung many of the minor 
labor saving devices which we like to consider typically 
American. 

The commission concludes that: 

"A reduction in hours has never lessened the working 
people's ability to compete in the markets of the world. 
States with shorter workdays actually manufacture their 
product at a lower cost than states with longer workdays." 

Conceivably, hours might be reduced to the point where 
increased cost of production would over-balance the gains to 
health and efficiency. On this point the commission holds: 

" If it were a question of reducing hours to absurdly low 
limits, nothing could be said in favor of the movement; but 
where — as is actually the case — the goal set up by the work- 
ing people is the eight-hour day, and there is no proposition 
and no way for a five- or a six-hour day, the arguments for 
reduction need no qualification from the standpoint of the 
workers and little from that of employers."* 

One final point needs to be considered in connection with 
the output of the shortened day; that is, the effect of regula- 
* Op. cit., p. 773. 
173 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

tion upon wages. Upon this point little can be dogmatically 
asserted. When we consider the rise and fall of wages in a 
large sense, and throughout a long period, a great variety of 
factors intervene. The causes of business depression and 
business prosperity are themselves obscure and often arise 
from sources incredibly remote and fantastic. Drought, 
poor crops, pestilence, wars — both of arms and men, or of 
tariflPs — often the mere fear of these, and things less tangible, 
such as "loss of confidence,*' set the solid business world, like 
a flimsy fabric, aquiver; a sentiment can again quiet it. 
With such extreme instability of values, wages are naturally 
bound up; cuts or increases respond to the business fluctua- 
tions, and it would be idle to ascribe the fall and rise of wages 
to one isolated phenomenon, such as the limitation of working 
hours. 

And yet, amid this flux of things, two uncontroverted 
facts stand out clearly : first, that the best wages are paid in 
the most strictly regulated trades. Where the limitation of 
hours is most defined and best enforced, wages are invariably 
highest. The unregulated trades, with the longest hours, 
are the most sweated and underpaid. Second, while we can- 
not assert that the operation of factory laws has been the 
direct cause of higher wages, there is no doubt that the sequel 
of shorter hours has almost invariably been a rise in wages, 
even after a temporary loss.* Output, as we have seen, has 
been maintained and increased in the shortened hours. The 
main cause for this has been the increased efficiency of the 
workers, and this is the explanation also of the seeming 
paradox of twelve hours' pay for ten hours' work, and ten 
hours' pay for eight hours' work. 

* See Part 1 1 of this volume, pp. 395-407. 



174 



VI 

REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT: FATIGUE AND 
OVERTIME WORK 

1. OVERTIME AS A SEPARATE ISSUE 

THE discussion of overtime is something to be sharply 
differentiated from the general question of reducing 
the length of the workday. It is true that when over- 
time is added to the day's work, making it nine to twelve 
hours or longer as the case may be, all the arguments that 
apply against the long day apply against overtime as well. 
It is bad because it results in too long a stretch of working 
hours, with all that implies for subject and object, worker and 
work. 

How, indeed, could it be otherwise? For whether the 
last exhausting hours of the day be called " overtime,'' or are 
a regular part of the day's work, the practical results of such 
protracted hours must be the same. 

But overtime means something more than an over-long 
period of work. It means irregular work; it means evening 
work after and in addition to day work, often without pre- 
vious notice to the employe; it means in many trades that 
worst sequence, overwork followed by out-of-work, a "rush" 
season of too much work with the slack season of no work and 
destitution close behind it. Hence in discussing overtime, 
besides the evident injuries to health and output, a number of 
other fundamental points need to be taken into account and 
realized. Is overtime inevitable and uncontrollable? How 
can it be replaced or avoided? This discussion is the more 
important because the really large issues involved in over- 
time, seemingly so subordinate and technical a question, 
are, as we have pointed out, so often totally misunderstood 

175 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

or ignored. These large issues we will attempt to outline 
under two heads: first, the relation between overtime and 
greater continuity or regularity of employment; and second 
(in Chapter VI 11), the relation between overtime and the 
crux of all legislation, enforcement. 

First, however, as to the evident likenesses between 
overtime and the long day in general. On the physiological 
side, we have seen that overtime, like other forms of overwork, 
injures health] because, in one word, it strains. It post- 
pones rest beyond the point when rest can normally accom- 
plish its office of repair. "Too late,'' is nature's answer to 
the slack period or let-up after an overtime bout in factory or 
store, and grievous are nature's revenges for the postpone- 
ment of our metabolic debts. Through the overstrain of 
that mysterious agency which, as we have seen, "directs, 
controls, and harmonizes the work of the parts of the organic 
machine" — our ramified nervous system — any or every 
organ may retain the semblance of perfect health and may 
yet refuse to function. Nervous dyspepsia, nervous palpita- 
tion of the heart, nervous eyestrain, and such functional ills 
are well recognized products of some form of "over-doing," 
as we call it among the well-to-do. Among working people, 
the same disorders and their causes have, in this country, 
received scant notice. These are what overtime work invites 
and brings with it, requiring during over-long hours increas- 
ing stimuli for wearied muscles from already tired nerve 
centers. 

On the economic side, too, overtime work, like all over- 
work, results in deteriorated quantity and quality of output. 
In the long run, the enlightened employer is obliged to con- 
clude that overtime does not pay. To this day, "spoiled 
work" is as marked a result of overtime as it was of the late 
working hours famous in the first English struggles for 
legislation.* 

Such an occupation as dressmaking illustrates the de- 
terioration due to overtime work. Here the caprice and in- 

* See Part 1 1 of this volume, pp. 433^140. 
176 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

considerateness of customers have been in large part re- 
sponsible for the universally outrageous duration of over- 
time, which is common in the creation of women's wearing 
apparel in every country. Year after year, the French and 
British factory inspectors have enlarged on the essentially 
wasteful, uneconomical character of overtime in destroying 
the efficiency of the workers. After a comparatively short 
period of pressure, output not only becomes inferior, but 
progressively so. Each week's work bids fair to be pro- 
gressively poorer than that of the previous week. 

Another reason why output falls oflF during overtime is 
due to the irregular habits which it fosters. It is hardly 
surprising that workers should come to work late the next 
morning after evening overtime, and that the reaction after 
a spurt should lead to "loafing" and inferior production in 
consequence.* 



2. OVERTIME AND REGULARITY 

So much for the evident similarity of results, physical 
and economic, between overtime and the long day. We 
turn next to the distinctive characteristic of overtime, its 
irregularity and the supposed necessity for longer working 
hours at certain times or seasons of the year. Indeed, in a 
certain sense, overtime is a survival of the long day, a stray 
left over from the time when any legislative regulation of 
working hours was considered intolerable. First, men held 
that the working day could not be regulated at all without 
financial disaster. Then, when it was shortened, and in- 
dustry still throve, the same kind of argument insisted, and 
still insists, that the law must allow concessions, privileges 
for certain occupations which, according to the employers, 
can not be compressed within the specified limit of hours. 

The provision for overtime work proceeds on the theory 
that at certain times and seasons employers cannot manage 
or meet their obligations under their regular schedule of 
*See Part II, pp. 440-444. 

12 177 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

hours, but must be free to call upon their employes for extra 
work. This theory has obtained in almost every industrial 
country that has restricted the hours of labor by law: the 
regulation of overtime has been one of the most vexed 
chapters. 

In innumerable trades it has been assumed that the de- 
mands of customers, reasonable or unreasonable, and the 
necessities of the season, avoidable or not, can be met in no 
other way than by lengthening the day's work for a longer or 
shorter period of time. 



3. EFFORTS TO EQUALIZE SEASONS 

But to lengthen the day's work is in fact not the last 
word on the subject. In many industries the most enlight- 
ened employers have found that overtime work is essentially 
inefficient, that excessive irregularities in work are as demor- 
alizing to business as they are physically damaging to the 
workers. It has proved possible to replace overtime, in large 
part, by spreading work more uniformly over the entire year, 
instead of concentrating it into short periods of intense over- 
work. Untold effort and money have been spent to equalize 
more nearly the week's and month's business. Thus, for 
instance, the now prevalent January "white sale" of the 
department stores was devised some years ago by a prominent 
New England firm, to attract customers during the stagnant 
period after the Christmas "rush." It was not written in 
the eternal fitness of things that the purchase of new linens 
should be associated with the first month of the year. But 
such is the psychological force of advertising, that the shop- 
ping public has become educated up to the January "white 
sale" throughout the country, and now no well-conducted 
store is without an artistic display of damasks, table linen, 
bed linen, and women's white underwear, as soon as the new 
year opens. When the heavy spring trade starts later in the 
year, the sale of white goods is, for the most part, over. In- 
deed, this effort to equalize seasons has been carried to such 

178 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

lengths that the January ''white sale/' invented as a stop- 
gap between seasons, has itself become a "rush'' period. 

This example is only one of many such efforts which 
might be cited. It has been found profitable by merchants 
to make the week's as well as the month's business approxi- 
mately equal. In many cities, the custom of making Monday 
a day of special "bargains" and "green trading stamps" has 
likewise been implanted in the public mind, for the sake of 
attracting customers on a previously dull day, and more 
nearly equalizing the business of the week. 

But the more important and more radical movements of 
this order have been carried out in manufacture rather than 
in commerce. The most farsighted manufacturers have 
shown how work can be more uniformly spread over the 
entire year, instead of allowing it to be crowded into short 
"rush" periods followed by stagnation. 

By way of concrete illustration, the reorganization of two 
great New England establishments, for the precise purpose 
of more nearly equalizing seasons, may be briefly described. 

The first of these is one of the largest shoe factories in 
the United States. The shoe trade was, and in many in- 
stances still is, a seasonal industry. Manufacturers wait for 
the spring and fall orders, slack periods alternating with 
seasonal rushes of work. The firm in question decided that 
this system was too great a strain upon their equipment; 
that it was wasteful and unnecessary. They determined to 
continue at work during the slack season by opening up new 
lines, requiring customers to send in their orders earlier, and 
by similar devices. Customers were notified that in order 
to have orders filled they must be received by certain fixed 
dates. Once received, the order is like a promissory note 
which will be met by the manufacturer at the given time. 
The dates for receiving and delivering orders are fixed in ro- 
tation, arranged so that each month's work is approximately 
equal. The scheme has been worked out in minutest detail, 
and since it has been put into practice this establishment has 
completely abolished overtime, as well as a slack season. 

179 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Uniform, continuous work has not only relieved the alterna- 
tions of idleness and overwork; it has, financially, paid. 

Similar has been the experience of one of the important 
manufacturers of jewelry cases in the United States. Case 
and box making is likewise a seasonal trade. The plethora 
of boxes needed for the Christmas trade — fine jewelry cases, 
candy boxes, boxes of innumerable shapes, sizes, and quali- 
ties — is usually not ordered by retailers until late in the year. 
A congestion of work results for the box makers in October 
and November. The manufacturer of cases whom we are 
considering and who supplies a large proportion of the fine 
jewelry cases used in the East, decided likewise, a few years 
ago, to equalize his year more nearly if possible. He, also, 
reorganized his business for the sake of obtaining that regu- 
larity of work which, once established, benefits employer and 
customer as much as employe. He has, indeed, met with so 
successful a response from his customers, that their orders 
are projected months in advance, being given sometimes as 
early as January for the following Christmas. 



4. THE ADAPTATION OF CUSTOMERS 

These examples of successful attempts to equalize 
seasons for purely business reasons illustrate also how the 
public adapts itself to changes of habit in purchasing. We 
are too apt to look upon custom, use and wont, what is, as 
entirely static things, impervious to change. In fact, how- 
ever, habits are not as tyrannical or clod-like as they appear, 
and in communities as well as in individuals the power of new 
ideas works its astounding transformations. 

The possibility of altering a well-entrenched habit on 
the part of the public was interestingly illustrated in Illinois 
a few years ago, when the passage of the ten-hour law for 
women prohibited overtime in laundries. Laundries have 
always required from their employes longer and more in- 
jurious overtime than perhaps any other industrial establish- 
ments in which women are employed. The schedule of 

1 80 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

working hours in laundries is very irregular. Not only in the 
United States but also in Great Britain and in Germany the 
long and irregular day's work in laundries has been repeatedly 
investigated and found unmistakably dangerous to health. 
The scrupulous cleanliness and abundance of clean linen on 
which our generation prides itself has been dearly provided, 
unknown to the wearers. .« 

Work in laundries usually begins late on Mondays, is j 
slack on Saturdays, and on the remaining days of the week ' 
runs up to a wholly indefensible number of hours. Women 
have been found employed in laundries as much as seventeen 
consecutive hours.* The alleged necessity for this overwork 
has been the need of completing large orders from res- 
taurants, steamship companies, and barber shops, as well 
as private families, in the quickest possible time. When the^ 
Illinois ten-hour law for women in factories and laundries 
went into effect in 1909, notices were posted by certain large 
steam laundries in various public places announcing that, on 
account of the new law, they would not be able to deliver 
laundry work on any Saturday unless it were received by 
the previous Wednesday noon. Previously linen had been 
accepted as late as Friday for delivery on the following day. 
Such a stand as the laundries assumed towards their cus- 
tomers doubtless means that the establishments which have 
previously insisted upon the almost immediate return of 
their linen will be obliged to lay in a larger stock. Nor does 
there appear to be any legitimate reason why the difficulty 
should not be met in this way, rather than by the indefensible 
overwork of thousands of girls and women in the hot and 
exhausting laundry occupations. 

The recorded experience of the British factory inspectors 
during the past twenty years in enforcing the law (in the 
textile and other well-organized trades where overtime is pro- 
hibited) shows unmistakably how the demands of customers 
yield to the requirements of a fixed legal working day. When 

* Report of the Consumers' League of the City of New York for 
the year 1909, p. 24. Published March, 1910. 

!8l 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

customers are obliged to place orders sufficiently in advance 
to enable them to be filled without overtime work, this habit 
soon tends to become automatic* 



5. THE POLICY OF PERSUASION BY CONSUMERS 

The experience of the laundries shows not only how 
customers adapt themselves to necessity and the require- 
ments of a fixed rule, but how the prohibition of overtime 
tends to create a greater regularity and uniformity of hours. 
Before the passage of the law of 1909, the Illinois laundry 
owners had presumably not considered the possibility of 
abolishing overtime and had certainly not attempted to re- 
quire a more reasonable margin of time for delivery. 

Since the beginning of modern industry, a vicious circle 
has tended to exist between the customer's (wholesale or 
retail) habit of waiting until the last minute before giving 
orders, and the employer's acceptance of orders at such late 
dates, regardless of the cost to his personnel and equipment. 
Either party could forcibly break this circle if either would 
take a determined stand — the customer by giving orders in 
time and refusing to accept them unless finished in season; 
the employer on his side refusing to accept orders received 
too late. Neither customers nor employers, however, are 
apt to take the initiative in this way until really urgent need 
arises. 

But when an outside authority — the law — representing 
the sentiment of the whole community, limits the length of 
the workday, both employers and customers are protected — 
the former against unreasonable requirements of their clien- 
tele, the latter against wearing, eating, or otherwise consum- 
ing articles the manner of whose manufacture or sale they 
condemn. 

It is true that consumers have in their own hands a 
considerable power of demanding changes from the manu- 
facturers and merchants with whom they deal. It is plainly 

♦See Part II of this volume, pp. 407^11; 528-531. 
182 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

to the latter's advantage to meet the desires, even the whims 
of their patrons; yet the consumer's power of obtaining what 
commodities he desires, in an infinite variety, has been httle 
used to secure working conditions of which he can thoroughly 
approve for the workers by whom he is clothed, fed, and 
otherwise provided with the material equipments of life. 
Even when the consumer awakes to a desire to mend condi- 
tions, the method of securing improvements from employers 
as favors, is sharply differentiated from the method of legis- 
lation, which secures them as rights. 

So, for instance, at Christmas time it has long been sup- 
posed that the employment of thousands, even hundreds of 
thousands, of young women is unavoidable each evening in 
the large cities, to wait upon a throng of shoppers and sight- 
seers. So firmly fixed in the public mind has this belief been 
that in New York state, for example, the law which pro- 
tects young women between sixteen and twenty-one years 
in stores, from more than sixty hours' work in one week, 
is suspended during the Christmas ''rush," when most 
needed. 

During the past twenty-one years an association of 
customers or consumers in New York City has consecutively 
endeavored to persuade the merchants with whom they deal 
to close their establishments in the evenings during the last 
half of December, in default of a law prohibiting Christmas 
overtime.* This policy of persuasion has led a growing 
number of the best establishments to close early, without 
financial disaster.f It proved that the supposed necessity 
of keeping these young women clerks at work in the evening 
after an exhausting day'swork, is after all not inherent. For 
when customers are not able to postpone their shopping for 
gifts until a few nights before Christmas, they find it possible, 
for the most part, to attend to it between eight in the morning 

* Reports of the Consumers' League of the City of New York, 1891 
to 1911. 

t In 1911, from among 40 of the best known stores in New York City, 
all but 14 closed at 6 or 7 o'clock in the evening. Only four stores re- 
mained open more than three nights before Christmas. 

183 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



and six at night. But the time and effort required to prove 
this has been out of proportion to the results attained; it 
has shown Hkewise that the early closing movement to be 
successful, must be sustained by a specific law. 



6. THE LEGAL PROHIBITION OF OVERTIME 

Hence the Consumers' Leagues, which under a national 
organization have spread into 17 different states, are devoting 
their efforts more and more to securing specific laws for the 
protection of working women and children. Justice and ex- 
pediency demand that a uniform rule shall protect the pro- 
gressive and check the backward employers in stores and other 
commercial establishments as well as in manufacture. Where- 
ever the indiscriminately long seasonal employment of women 
has been forbidden by law, even the backward employers 
have found it possible to mend such irregularities, in some 
degree if not wholly, by foresight and management. A 
more equal and uniform distribution of work throughout 
the year has followed. This seems to be the uniform ex- 
perience of countries whose industrial experience is recorded 
in the reports of their factory inspectors. British, French, 
German reports coincide in yearly comments* that legisla- 
tion which fixes a "normal day'' has been the best incentive 
towards greater regularity of employment, planned in ad- 
vance to meet the legal requirement as to hours. In 1902, 
and again in 1903, the Committee of the British Association 
for the Advancement of Science, appointed to investigate the 
economic effect of legislation regulating women's labor, took 
occasion to emphasize the influence of legislation on regular- 
ity of employment, stating that the British acts had led to 
spreading work more uniformly over the week, month, and 
year, and that without the acts it "seems certain" that there 
would have been less uniformity.! 

*See Part II of this volume, pp. 444-463. 

t British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1902. Women's 
Labour, 2nd Report, pp. 293-295; 1903, 3rd Report, pp. 340-341. 

184 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

On the other hand, in trades where overtime has been 
tolerated, the pressure towards long and irregular hours — 
"spurting" — has been almost irresistible. As one of the 
British inspectors somewhat naively puts it: 

" I am afraid that foresight and arrangement will never 
be exercised while the mischievous expedient of overtime is 
made so easy."* 

It is indeed so much easier, so much more in line with natural 
human inertia, simply to lengthen the workday by a few 
hours, and to keep the workers who are on hand, rather than 
to plan laboriously in advance to meet emergencies, that 
overtime takes on the appearance of an absolute necessity. 

No industry illustrates this more clearly than the canning 
trade, to whose quite unrecognized physical hardships we have 
drawn attention in a previous chapter. In few industries, 
on the whole, have employers made less consistent efforts to 
reduce overtime. At the same time they are insisting to 
legislatures and the public that overtime work is an inherent 
necessity in the canneries. 

In the federal investigation, as we have seen, women 
were found employed in the canneries up to ninety hours 
in the week, while the canners maintain that without such 
intolerable exploitation their industry could not exist, when 
a seasonal glut of raw materials overtakes them. But the 
truth is that there are more than two horns to this dilemma. 
For while the canners are so depleting their workers, on the 
plea of unavoidable necessity, they are at the same time often 
found neglecting the most elementary means of meeting 
the admitted difficulties of their industry, and of providing 
themselves with a sufficient number of workers at times of 
glut. In the summer of 1907, as was known to the writer, 
some women were employed in one New York cannery up 
to eighty-five hours in one week, while side by side with 
them other women were employed twenty-five hours and less. 
At some canneries no devices more effective than ringing the 

* British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII, p. 90. 1893. 
185 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

factory bell were used to summon workers living within hear- 
ing distance, when unexpectedly heavy pea deliveries were 
received late in the afternoon, and workers who responded to 
the summons were kept working until after midnight — 
sufficient proof that the canners have simply rested upon their 
alleged "necessity'' for overtime, and have spent upon the 
organization of the working force little of the ingenuity and 
intelligence which have been devoted to the technique of 
canning. It is not credible that in a trade where technical 
mechanical processes have been brought to such perfection, 
the difficulties of management can not be better solved. 
The latest government investigation of canneries in 
Maryland and California, dwells upon this "entire absence 
of working-time records, and almost uniform lack of records 
of any description for the piece-workers."* 

"Without such records," as the report says, "it is 
impossible for employers to make any progress in distributing 
the strain of excess work over the whole force, for there is 
nothing but the memory or personal interest of the foremen 
to mark the working time of each employe. . . . 

"It is singular that employers who direct other phases 
of their business along lines indicated by carefully kept ac- 
counts should attempt to regulate the supply of so large a 
part of their labor without the help of adequate records."! 

Indeed, once overtime is tolerated on the plea of neces- 
sity, it is almost impossible to draw the line where necessity 

* Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 96, Sept., 1911. 
Hours and Earnings of Women Workers in Maryland and California, pp. 
399-400. 

t Interesting confirmation of this disorganization of the labor force 
was given at the public hearing on the ten-hour bill for women, at Annapolis, 
Maryland, on February 14, 1912. 

"Mr. Soper (counsel for the canners): No record is kept of the names 
of these people, is there? 

Mr. Numsen (a canner): Absolutely none. 

Mr. Soper: if you were to go to the canners and ask some of them 
to show you their books, they cannot show, to save their souls, how many 
hours any particular person worked in their factory; not because they want 
to conceal it, but because of the exigency of the situation which does not 
permit of the record; therefore, nobody can tell exactly the amount of time 
that is put in by any particular person." (Stenographic record of hearing, 
pp. 27 and 40.) 

1 86 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

begins and ends. The canners maintain that overtime is 
unavoidable on account of the perishable nature of their raw 
produce. But what possible defense is the perishability of 
fruits and vegetables for such a common practice as the 
employment of women at night at labeling jars and cans? 

The federal report on canneries states that in California 
some of the " long drives/' — reaching a maximum of twelve 
to fifteen hours a day or seventy-two to ninety-eight hours 
in one week, — are worked by labelers and stampers, who 
handle the product "after it is canned, hermetically sealed, 
cooked, and no longer perishable."* 

What justification is the perishability of the products for 
requiring overtime work at making fruit and berry baskets? 
Fruits and berries are perishable, but no perversity could so 
describe the baskets. Yet in one state at least (Delaware) 
the canners have actually had enacted into law special per- 
mission to work young children of any age, for any number 
of hours, at berry and fruit basket making, as well as at the 
technical processes of canning. Anyone can see that there 
is no shadow of excuse for such exploitation. It is due to 
the sheer license which flourishes in such employment as the 
canneries and the sweated trades, where the employer is free 
to use his employes to the limits of their physical strength. 

It is indeed true that far greater difficulties attend a 
regular schedule of hours in the canneries than in other 
factories. Once a glut of produce reaches the canneries it 
must be used at once, within a very short period. Experts 
allow five to twenty-four hours for holding peas before 
canning, about twenty-four hours for beans, and so on,t 
though the possibilities of cold storage have not yet been ex- 
plored. The canners cannot stay the hand of Nature or 
prevent the sudden ripening of crops. But they can learn 
and provide in advance for these alleged "emergencies" to 
an extent quite unapproached at present in most states. 

* Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 96, p. 395. 
t Annual Report of the Bureau of Factory Inspection. New York 
State Department of Labor, 1908, pp. 393, 394. 

187 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

It was on this ground that the Supreme Court of Massa- 
chusetts, a few years ago, refused to accept the plea of neces- 
sity for violation of the Sunday law by the owner of cran- 
berry bogs in Plymouth County.* The court's decision is 
so clear and goes so directly to the root of the diificulties 
in limiting the day's work as well as in enforcing the Sunday 
rest that it should, at least in part, be quoted. 

The owner of the bogs contended that he could not 
harvest his crop without working on Sunday; that Sunday 
work was not unlawful, if it was a matter of necessity; and 
that he was justified in working on Sunday if, "owing to the 
size of the crop, the difficulty of procuring or housing labor, 
the prospect of frost, or the danger of the fruit getting over- 
ripe and other circumstances, he had reason to believe that 
the crop might be injured or lost if he did not gather it on 
the Lord's Day." 

On cross examination in the lower court, it was shown 
that if the employer had procured enough men — only one- 
sixth more — " he could have done the same work in six days 
that he was doing in seven.'' It was also shown that while 
the crop was three times greater than it had ever been before, 
the owner knew at the end of July that he should probably 
have such a crop and that he should have to employ a great 
many more men to take care of it in September. It was 
shown that his employes lived in shanties owned by him, 
that he could not accommodate any more men, and had not 
made any effort to do so. He began to employ between 
three and four hundred men towards the middle of September. 

The judge in the lower court instructed the jury that 
the employment of these men on Sunday was not, under the 
circumstances, "work of necessity within the meaning of the 
statute." In upholding the decision of the lower court, 
the Supreme Court of Massachusetts further emphasized the 
fact that this work was not one of necessity, and refused 
to consider as emergencies, facts which might have been 
provided for in advance. 

* Commonwealth v. Edwin M. White. 190 Mass. 578. 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

"Without going over the evidence in detail," said the 
court, ''it is sufficient to say that here there was no extra- 
ordinary, sudden and unexpected emergency. The crop was 
large, it is true, but that it was Hkely to be large had been 
known for weeks. The weather was only what might have 
been expected. The substance of the testimony was simply 
that in gathering the crop it was somewhat less expensive 
and more convenient to work seven days in the week rather 
than six. That is not enough. Such testimony falls far 
short of showing 'necessity' within the meaning of the 
statute." 

After all, these so-called "emergencies" in the canneries 
are essentially the same (although of far higher degree) as 
those which may arise in all businesses. With the fickleness 
of modern fashions, and their extraordinarily sudden changes, 
the market for most commodities is precarious. All the 
articles of men's as well as women's clothing — garments, hat- 
wear, foot-wear, ornaments, jewelry, the furniture of our 
houses, the service upon our tables, sports (like bicycling, a 
few years ago, and motoring today), the very songs of the 
music halls, echoing in the streets and in the innumerable 
musical instruments whose manufacture develops from year 
to year — all these things are subject to changes in fashion 
more violent than a former generation could drearn of. 
Articles in demand in January are out-of-date by June. 
Last year's models are antiquated. The whirligig of time 
never before brought such revenges. And in consequence 
all these commodities are practically "seasonal," in the 
sense that they are of value at a given moment or season, 
like fruits, berries, and vegetables ripe in field or orchard. 
And like the fruits, too, after their moments of prime, they 
are useless, over-ripe. 

Are we then driven to conclude that all these manu- 
factures must have special concessions and privileges of 
overtime allowed by law, such as the canners maintain that 
they must have? No. In this country we have, with single 
exceptions, recorded in our legislation (and are now facing 
the problem of enforcing) our contention that, so far as 

189 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

working women and children are affected, the seasonal 
necessities must be provided for by good management within 
reasonable working hours; that, in a word, production must 
be limited to conserve the workers' health and welfare, which 
is the health and welfare of the nation. 

That such a contention is not unreasonable the best 
practice in all industries tends to prove. The appeal is always 
from Philip drunk to Philip sober: from the alleged impossi- 
bilities to the actual facts. Even in canning, the extent of 
overtime varies greatly in different establishments, and this 
variation, as a recent New York labor report points out, 

" is of itself highly significant. For if one firm has very little 
overtime while another has a great deal, . . . the ques- 
tion naturally arises whether the overtime actually occurring 
in the latter is not due to the methods of management of that 
firm, rather than to conditions necessarily inherent in the 
industry. 

" Positively it can be said that the very fact that some 
firms get along with little or no overtime, seems to throw 
upon those with more overtime the burden of proving the 
necessity for such overtime.''* 

Overproduction, — the attempt of manufacturers to con- 
tract for more than their equipment can legitimately ac- 
complish, — is well known the world over, and, as a policy, 
defeats its own ends. It is like unintelligent farming, which 
tries to get from the soil more than it can bear, and leaves it 
impoverished after too abundant bearing. The soil, in time, 
can be revivified, if nourished and allowed to lie fallow. But 
after over-production, what working people can afford to lie 
fallow, even were the revival of their powers thereby assured? 
As the British factory inspector, already quoted, intelligently 
remarks: 

" There will always be some people who do not know how 
to refuse orders, however little they may be prepared to 
execute them, and who expect their work people to help 
them out of the difficulty by working excessive hours." 

♦Annual Report of the Bureau of Factory Inspection. New York 
State Department of Labor, 1908, p. 363. 

190 



REGULARITY OF EMPLOYMENT 

It is precisely to save workingwomen from the dilemma 
of either working such excessive hours, or of suflFering dis- 
missal, that the police power of states has interfered with 
" private'' businesses and has sanctioned legislation which 
regulates the length of the workday. That legislation is 
still most defective in tacitly or specifically allowing overtime. 

Our conclusion would, therefore, be that the alleged 
necessity for overtime, and the consequent irregularity of 
work, is not an inherent necessity. If the testimony of ex- 
perience counts for anything, it goes to prove that in fields 
where overtime and irregularity were long thought indis- 
pensable, a better organization has spread work more uni- 
formly through the year, and has in large part done away with 
overtime. It shows also that the caprice of customers, to 
which the necessity for overtime is often ascribed, can also 
be regulated to a degree as yet unapproached in many in- 
dustries. Finally, both for customers and employers, the 
best incentive to regularity has been the legal regulation of 
working hours — a regulation which is most effective where it 
is most specific and exact. 



191 



VII 

THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT: ITS RELA- 
TION TO HUMAN ENERGIES 

IN the preceding chapter, the detailed planning of output 
in advance of performance, in two progressive New 
England establishments, was related to point out the 
permanence of employment and avoidance of overtime there- 
by effected.* 

These results or, more truly, by-products were achieved 
by means of the new system which, under the name of scien- 
tific management, industrial efficiency, and the like, is slowly 
spreading through the world. We have already touched in 
passing upon several incidents of this new order, such as the 
increased use of the stop-watch in gauging men's efficiencies. 
Abbe's studies of individual working capacity also tended in 
the direction of scientific management. But the system it- 
self is something immensely larger than any of the factors 
which compose it. It is a philosophy, not a new routine; or 
more exactly, it is a new synthesis of many elements pre- 
viously tested and untested. Its results have intoxicated 
the imagination. " I cannot prophesy the end, there is no 
end. ... I am learning my trades all over again," testi- 
fied a prominent contractor in regard to the system, before 
the Interstate Commerce Commission.! Scientific manage- 
ment is said to differ from the ordinary systems of produc- 
tion "much as production by machinery differs from pro- 
duction by hand; and the revolution . . . which must 
result from the introduction of scientific management is com- 

* See pages 178-179. 

t Brandeis, Louis D.: Before the Interstate Commerce Commission, 
Docket No. 3400. Brief on behalf of the Traffic Committee of Commercial 
Organizations of Atlantic Seaboard, 1911, pp. 21 and d>Z. 

192 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

parable only to that involved in the transition from hand to 
machine production/' 

These are prodigious assertions seriously made. Of the 
philosophy and practice which underlie them we can con- 
sider here only the most distinctive notes, which are most 
closely allied to the subjects which we have treated up to 
this point. 



1. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ORDINARY SPEEDING-UP AND 
THE NEW SYSTEM 

Some concrete examples of increased efficiency under 
scientific management are as follows : 

" (a) When applied to the simple operation of load- 
ing by hand a railroad car with pig iron, the performance 
of the individual worker increased from \2}4 to 47 tons 
a day. 

'' (b) When applied to shoveling coal, it doubled 
or trebled the performance of the shoveler. 

"(c) When applied to machine shop work, it de- 
veloped in certain operations increases in production, 
ranging from 400 to 1800 per cent. 

" (d) When applied to bricklaying, the day's ac- 
complishment rose from 1000 to 2700 bricks. (Gilbreth : 
Record, p. 3410.) 

"(e) When applied in the manufacture of ma- 
chinery, 75 men in the machine shop with 20 in the 
planning department do two to three times as much 
work as 105 men in the machine shop did under the old 
methods. (Hathaway: Record, p. 3059.) 

"(f) When applied in the manufacture of cotton 
goods, it increased the output 100 per cent. (Scheel: 
Record, p. 3377.)"* 

"One of the folders on light work (in a cloth finishing 
establishment), a wonderfully skilful young woman, who had 
folded 155 pieces a day before, now folded 887. "f 

* Brandeis, op. cit., pp. 38-39. 

t See Scientific Management as Applied to Women's Work, in Clark, 
S. A., and Wyatt, Edith: Making Both Ends Meet, p. 242. New York, 
The Macmillan Co., 1911. 

13 193 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

The question at once arises: How do these extraordinary 
increases of output differ from the ordinary speeding up and 
pace-making which we have seen to be common in industry, 
and prime factors in its overstrain? It is entirely natural 
that, at first sight, the almost incredible heightening of hu- 
man capacity which scientific management achieves should 
be viewed with extreme suspicion. Instinctively we ask how 
this is accomplished, and what are its effects upon the workers. 

In both ordinary management and under the new system, 
it is the stimulus of reward which calls forth the extra exer- 
tions of the workers. Indeed, scientific management has 
evolved stimuli of far greater psychological power than any 
known before, in its finely adjusted rates and proportions of 
pay. 

But the diversified pay systems are merely subordin- 
ate mechanisms. Scientific management differs from other 
systems not in degree, but in kind. Ordinary management 
leaves the workers in any industry to learn and pursue their 
trades by imitation from their fellows, by tradition and the 
rule of thumb. Scientific management assumes the responsi- 
bility of teaching the workman a predetermined task and 
keeping him adequately provided to accomplish this task. 

In this apparently simple assumption lie the germs of a 
wholly new system of production. The responsibilities as- 
sumed by scientific management involve a new conception of 
every business. It replaces empiricism by predetermination 
of results; the haphazard of the mechanic by the engineer's 
application of scientific laws. Each process of work is ana- 
lyzed into its ultimate units. Each smallest step of the proc- 
ess is compared with an ideal standard of performance, 
and allowance being made for practical conditions, an at- 
tainable commercial standard is set for each unit of work and 
for the whole work reassembled in its entirety.* 

This brief formula contains the gist of a long series of 
complicated operations. It presupposes the scientific selec- 
tion of workmen for their tasks; an analytical time study of 

* Brandeis, op. cit., p. 17. 
194 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

each unit of work; records of the accompHshment of not only 
each individual but of each machine and of the material used; 
the standardizing of all tools, machines, and equipment, and 
similar contrivances for obtaining in advance exact know- 
ledge of "what work is to be done, how it shall be done, 
when it shall be done, and what it shall cost." Some con- 
crete examples will make this clearer. 

Let us consider first one which has been most widely 
quoted and which deals with one of the simplest forms 
of human labor, — loading a freight car. Frederick W. 
Taylor, — best known in the scientific world as the author of 
the "Art of Cutting Metals,'* a profound work resulting from 
twenty-six years of investigation, — is also the originator of 
the new study of efficiency. He has given an intensely in- 
teresting account of the first application of the new system 
at the Bethlehem Steel Works.* 

"The opening of the Spanish War found some 80,000 
tons of pig iron placed in small piles in an open field adjoining 
the works. Prices for pig iron had been so low that it could 
not be sold at a profit, and it therefore had been stored. 
With the opening of the Spanish War, the price of pig iron 
rose, and this large accumulation of iron was sold. This gave 
us a good opportunity to show the workmen, as well as the 
owners and managers of the works, on a fairly large scale the 
advantages of task work over the old-fashioned day work and 
piece work, in doing a very elementary class of work. 

"The Bethlehem Steel Company had had five blast 
furnaces the product of which had been handled by a pig- 
iron gang for many years. This gang, at this time, consisted 
of about 75 men. They were good, average pig-iron handlers, 
were under an excellent foreman who himself had been a pig- 
iron handler, and the work was done, on the whole, about as 
fast and as cheaply as it was anywhere else at that time. 

"A railroad switch was run out into the field, right 
along the edge of the piles of pig iron. An inclined plank 
was placed against the side of a car, and each man picked up 
from his pile a pig of iron weighing about 92 pounds, walked 
up the inclined plank and dropped it on the end of the car. 

* Taylor, Frederick W,: Principles of Scientific Management, pp. 
41 and 42. New York, Harper and Brothers, 1911. 

195 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

"We found that this gang were loading on the average 
about \2}^ long tons per man per day. We were surprised 
to find, after studying the matter, that a first-class pig-iron 
handler ought to handle between 47 and 48 long tons per day, 
instead of 12}4 tons. This task seemed to us so very large 
that we were obliged to go over our work several times before 
we were absolutely sure that we were right." 

How, now, had this result been come at? Mr. Taylor 
had long sought to discover, and had spent years in attempt- 
ing to measure ''the tiring effects of heavy labor'' upon a 
first-class man. His object was to find an exact mechanical 
measurement of daily work. He sought to learn what frac- 
tion of a horse-power a man was able to exert in one day, 
translated into foot pounds of work.* Records of previous 
experiments by physiologists and engineers were found too 
meager to base any laws upon. Accordingly, in 1881, while 
Mr. Taylor was employed in the Midvale Steel Works, he 
began the series of experiments which ultimately yielded the 
desired result and led the way for the system which bears his 
name. 

Two first-class laborers were selected and were given 
various tasks. Each motion was timed by a stop-watch. 
Useless and awkward motions were eliminated or replaced by 
correct movements. But no relation was discovered between 
the tiring effects of various kinds of heavy work and the foot 
pounds of energy exerted. 

''On some kinds of work the man would be tired out 
when doing perhaps not more than one-eighth of a horse- 
power, while in others he would be tired to no greater extent 
by doing half a horse-power of work. We failed, therefore, 
to find any law which was an accurate guide to the maximum 
day's work for a first-class workman."! 

It was not until some years later, after a second and 
third elaborate series of observations and measurements, that 

*One foot-pound = the amount of energy required to raise one pound 
to a height of one foot. One horse-power = 33,000 foot-pounds per minute, 
t Taylor, op. cit., p. 55. 

196 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

the law sought was found. " And it is so simple in its nature/' 
says Mr. Taylor, ''that it is truly remarkable that it should 
not have been discovered and clearly understood years 
before/' From our physiological point of view, it is pecu- 
liarly interesting to fmd this law of mechanical work simply 
an extension and mathematical working out of the basic 
principle which has emerged from our study of fatigue: 
That rest must adequately balance exertion. Translated into 
the language of mechanical labor, this requires that a man 
should be under load for only a definite percentage of the day, 
and must be entirely free from load at frequent intervals. 

" For example, when pig iron is being handled (each 
pig weighing 92 pounds), a first-class workman can only 
be under load 43 per cent of the day. He must be en- 
tirely free from load during 57 per cent of the day. And as 
the load becomes lighter, the percentage of the day under 
which the man can remain under load increases. So that, if 
the workman is handling half-pig, weighing 46 pounds, he 
can then be under load 58 per cent of the day, and only has 
to rest during 42 per cent."'^ 

The process of adjustment is continuous, and as the 
load grows lighter the workman can remain under load, 
without undue fatigue, during a larger and larger percentage 
of the day. 

This formula was obtained by Mr. C. G. Earth's mathe- 
matical studies, in which each element of the work was 
graphically represented by plotting curves, to give a bird's- 
eye view of the data and records accumulated. 

But to explain the formula thus evolved, we must revert 
again to the familiar language and conceptions of physiology. 
As Mr. Taylor puts it: 

''Throughout the time that the man is under a heavy 
load, the tissues of his arm muscles are in process of degenera- 
tion, and frequent periods of rest are required in order that 
the blood may have a chance to restore these tissues to their 
normal condition."! 

* Taylor, op. cit., pp. 57 and 58. t Ibid., p. 58. 

197 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

No constant relation was found between the foot pounds 
of energy exerted and the tiring eflFect of various kinds of 
heavy muscular work, because no horse-power whatever is 
exerted by the man who stands still under load, however 
intense his efforts. His arm muscles are under the same se- 
vere tension whether he is moving or not, but that tension 
had not been registered. 

Such were the results of the long-continued observations 
and studies which preceded the efficiency engineer's estimate 
of 47 long tons instead of \2}4, as the proper day's work for 
pig-iron handlers. His practical task was now to select 
workmen specially fitted for this type of work; his next to 
train them to accomplish it. Mr. Taylor's account of this 
process in relation to the new management is again of intense 
interest : 

"Schmidt started to work, and all day long and at 
regular intervals, was told by the man who stood over him 
with a watch, ' Now, pick up a pig and walk. Now sit down 
and rest. Now walk — now rest,' etc. He worked when he 
was told to work, and rested when he was told to rest, and at 
half past five in the afternoon had his 47>^ tons loaded on the 
car. And he practically never failed to work at this pace and 
do the task that was set him during the three years that the 
writer was at Bethlehem."* 

Gradually other men were chosen and trained to handle 
pig iron at the rate of 47>^ tons per day, receiving $1.85 in- 
stead of the ruling rate of SI. 15 per day, until all of the pig 
iron was handled at this high rate and the gang received 60 
per cent higher wages than other workmen around them. 

In this instance it is perfectly clear that such an extra- 
ordinary heightening of human working capacity could not 
possibly have resulted from the mere incentive of a high wage. 
It resulted from the application of the laws of exact science 
learned after years of investigation. The high wage was 
nothing more than an inducement for the workman to change 

* Taylor, op. cit., p. 47. 
198 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

his ordinary habits and become the pupil of a new system. 
As Mr. Taylor rightly says: 

" If Schmidt had been allowed to attack the pile of 47 
tons of pig iron without the guidance or direction of a man 
who understood the art, or science, of handling pig iron, in 
his desire to earn his high wages he would probably have tired 
himself out by 11 or 12 o'clock in the day. He would have 
kept so steadily at work that his muscles would not have had 
the proper periods of rest absolutely needed for recuperation, 
and he would have been completely exhausted early in the 
day. By having a man, however, who understood this law, 
stand over him and direct his work, day after day, until he 
acquired the habit of resting at proper intervals, he was able 
to work at an even gait all day long, without unduly tiring 
himself.''* 

Here we have the system of scientific management at 
its best. It justifies the seemingly extraordinary claim that 
" the whole realm of science is brought to the aid of the hum- 
blest workman." 

Schmidt was the gainer in wages, the company and the 
community in the amount of work done. With workers of 
finer intelligence and reactions, the self-respect and exhilara- 
tion which spring from achievement are as great as the in- 
creased wage. In this instance the prodigious increase in 
working capacity was in direct proportion to the physiolog- 
ical potentialities of the workman. Any one can see the 
difference between the ordinary methods of "speeding up" 
and this speed achieved by the efficiency engineer. He also 
sets up speed as one of his ends. He aims for speed not only 
to increase quantity of work, as with the pig-iron handlers, 
but regards it also as a function of quality.f 

Now just in proportion as this function of speed is 
developed, subject to the capacities of the human agent, instead 

* Taylor, op. cit., p. 59. 

t "In the last process of stamping tickets and ticketing (in a cloth 
finishing establishment) the girls work without one superfluous motion, with 
a deftness very attractive to see; and both here and at book folding justified 
the claim made by Scientific Management that speed is a function of quality." 
Clark and Wyatt, op. cit., p. 244. 

199 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

of as a driver of those capacities, it counts as a gain. Just so 
soon as the function of speed is disassociated from its effects 
on the worker, we revert to the old system of pace-making 
and speeding. 

Such a reversion was seen in the case of the Bethlehem 
Steel Works. When the ownership of the works passed into 
the hands of Charles M. Schwab in 1901, the efficiency en- 
gineers were dismissed. But the machinery of their system 
was kept. Bonuses, premiums, and other inducements for 
great exertions on the part of the workers were continued, but 
without the spirit which had previously made these contriv- 
ances parts of a larger system, as in the case of Schmidt, the 
pig-iron man. The result was a return to the system of 
"drive,'' such as the world has seldom seen excelled.* 

This, indeed, is one of the dangers of scientific manage- 
ment. Unscrupulous men can easily pervert it to their own 
uses. Its mechanical features, such as timing operations by a 
stop-watch, and the like, are easily copied, and unless they 
are correctly applied the workers can thereby be exploited 
more relentlessly than ever before. 

But such perversions cannot fairly be charged against 
the system itself. They emphasize the dangers of this new 
instrument of efficiency; it may be used as a club as well as 
a crutch. But many invaluable stimuli are dangerous in the 
wrong hands. If the unscrupulous use of scientific manage- 
ment were all that could be charged against it, the system 
could defend itself easily enough. That more has been 
charged against it, it would be idle to deny. 

More serious is the contention that the efficiency engi- 
neers themselves have failed to gauge fairly the tax of in- 
creased productivity upon the workers, and into the justice 
of this charge it behooves us to inquire. 

* Gantt, H. G.: Work, Wages and Profits, p. 107. Published by The 
Engineering Magaiine, New York, 1910. 



200 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

2. BENEFITS OF THE NEW SYSTEM 

We have seen that in the case of Schmidt, the pig-iron 
man, increased efficiency was attributed to the balance of 
exertion by enforced rests. In machine work, obviously, 
many more complicated factors intervene. Here scientific 
management obtains its marvelous results not only by teach- 
ing the worker the best possible way of accomplishing his 
task with the least time and effort, but also by removing all 
possible external obstacles. The management has, in ad- 
vance, perfected his equipment and sees that it is always in 
perfect order and that the worker is regularly supplied with 
material in perfect order and condition. 

In reorganizing the weaving room of a cotton mill, for 
instance,* the efficiency engineer spent a month in studying 
and timing the looms and the most expert weavers. He 
learned exactly how much time it was necessary for the loom 
to be stopped each day to remove and replace the bobbins, 
etc., and what proportion of time it should actually be weav- 
ing, when all unnecessary delays and obstacles were removed. 
After starting the first workers on their predetermined tasks, 
he found himself still dissatisfied with the condition of the 
looms and the way in which the warps and filling were sup- 
plied. The new system was again delayed eleven days un- 
til all external delays and obstacles, which might interfere 
with the accomplishment of the specified number of picks 
to be thrown by the loom, were removed. The first workers 
were then taught their trade anew by the most expert weaver, 
chosen as teacher, with the efficiency engineer to superintend 
and teach the teacher. 

Another striking example of regularizing work under 
scientific management and saving the workers from avoidable 
delay was shown in the recent reorganization of the general 
machine shops of the government arsenal at Watertown, 
Massachusetts. t The most important manufactures in the 

* Gantt, op. cit., pp. 143 ff . 

t Statement of Secretary of War Stimson in regard to War Depart- 
ment's Experiments with Scientific Management, 1911. 

201 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

arsenal are seacoast gun carriages — large structures with 
hundreds of parts, requiring many months for their comple- 
tion. Shop methods at the different arsenals were believed 
to be fully abreast of the best general work in private in- 
dustries of the same nature. Yet it was concluded that the 
general machine shop might be materially improved under 
scientific management. One of the chief aims has been pre- 
cisely to regulate " the flow of work so that it shall be even 
and continuous.'' 

"An expert in shop management was employed, and 
under his guidance the . . . orders for manufacture now 
go from the office to the shops with a much more complete 
arrangement and supply than formerly of drawings, specifica- 
tions, lists of parts, list of material, and orders regulating the 
particular parts of the structure to be produced . . . 

"There has been installed a planning room, equipped 
with personnel and appliances for the regular production of 
what might be called the time tables of the thousands of 
pieces which must travel through the various shops on their 
way from the stage of raw material to that of finished product, 
without collisions or unnecessary delays. 

"The work of planning the course of component parts 
of the structures to be manufactured through the shops of the 
arsenal has been systematized, so that this course shall be 
regular and orderly, and the work shall at no time be held 
through the lack of some component which is not at hand 
when needed; and that no wasteful effect shall arise through 
congestion of work at particular machines, or the idleness of 
other machines or workmen, while waiting for the assignment 
of operations which should have been planned for them in 
advance." 

Compared with such a regime, the crudity and chaos of 
ordinary systems stand out in glaring contrast. A revolu- 
tion has been effected; a terrible waste has been checked, of 
that capital which alone is common and equal for all mortal 
beings: of /iw^, "the daily miracle . . . the inexplicable 
raw material of everything." Hitherto hours, days, and 
weeks of employment have been habitually lost to the 
workers through no fault of their own, but through the sheer 

202 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

incompetence of the management in performing its obliga- 
tions and supplying materials and equipment fairly. No 
page in industry's history is more dreary and disheartening 
than the "time lost'' by competent and willing workers, 
waiting, unpaid, for employment which might be fairly regu- 
larized. Indeed, the daily delays and irregularities of work 
involve more than the direct loss of wage and earning capac- 
ity. They are more subtly interfused into the day's work; 
and the psychological gain which springs from the elimination 
of such daily annoyance and friction is undoubtedly an im- 
portant factor in heightening working capacity under scien- 
tific management. 

The new organization of work has brou^^.ht also a new 
emphasis upon the workers' physical surroundings. All 
those physical inconveniences which waste human strength 
and comfort and which are common rather than uncommon 
characteristics of our workshops, — such as bad air, bad light, 
overcrowding, dirt, and unsanitary conditions, — are all marks 
of ineificiency in the management. They are intolerable to 
the system which is based essentially on the observation and 
study of cause and effect. Where the ordinary management 
sees in the crudest so-called "welfare work" (better light, air, 
sanitation, and comfort) merely concessions to the labor 
force, the engineer sees them as indispensable parts of the 
equipment. They are the mere commonplaces of efficiency, 
without which the accomplishment of predetermined tasks 
cannot be expected. 

Under such a system, as we have seen, the increase in 
production has been stupendous. Yet the picture has its 
reverse, which may not be ignored. The multiplied task has 
within it real elements of danger, and unless they are seen and 
neutralized at the outset, the new management may undo its 
benefits. 

3. DANGERS OF THE NEW SYSTEM 

It is clear that unless the working hours are proportion- 
ately shortened, or eased by rests, the physical or nervous 

203 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

hardship inherent in any process is bound to be multipHed 
when the task is multiplied. This was true in the case of the 
weavers under scientific management, and is almost inevit- 
able in all machine processes. Take, for another example, 
the case of girls who wind the bobbins for filling, in a cotton 
mill. They watch the thread from 18 bobbins, stopping and 
replacing the bobbins by throwing their weight upon foot 
pedals. The girls' work was concentrated by providing 
doffers to place the bobbins on the warp, formerly done by 
the girls themselves. A time study was made and the task 
so increased that the girls earned from $8.00 to $10.50 a 
week, in place of their previous salary of $7.00 to $7.50. The 
hours of labor. were not changed. It is easy to see that the 
increased stamping of the pedals, necessitated by the larger 
task, was bound to be more exhausting than before.* 

So, too, with the girl spool tenders. " In replacing the 
bobbins and fastening the broken threads with a tier knot 
the girls have to stoop down almost to the floor.'' Naturally, 
then, the increased task requires proportionally more con- 
tinuous stooping. 

Moreover, as we saw in discussing the strain of industry, 
the increased concentration of attention upon more limited 
and intensive tasks makes for monotony and increases effort. 
This, it is true, is counteracted under scientific management 
by the worker's new interest in earning a larger wage, condi- 
tional upon the quality as well as the quantity of a given task. 
Where the payment of a bonus, over and above the regular 
day- or piece-rate, does not lead to an undue strain of effort, 
it undoubtedly acts as a new and important psychological 
motive in arousing interest in work. And this interest, in the 
intricacy of our psychological powers, itself develops capacity 
and reduces effort. 

The new order of production is thus infinitely complex 

in its effects upon working capacity. No offhand or general 

statement can gauge its true results. When, therefore, the 

efficiency engineer presents to us as complete answer the fact 

* Clark and Wyatt, op. cit., pp. 256-257. 

204 



THE NEW SCIENCF. OF MANAGEMENT 

that the predetermined task has been accompHshed and that 
bonuses have been earned by foreman and workers, he does 
not answer our demand to learn the effect upon the workers. 

Mr. Gantt, for instance, in his interesting book, shov/s by 
graphic charts how the working capacity of men and girls in 
a variety of establishments was remarkably increased. He 
insists upon the benefit accruing to the workers under scien- 
tific management, not only in efficiency andr wages, but in 
habits of industry, in self-respect and improved personal 
appearance. He states in general, that this ianprovement is 
more marked in girls than in men, and that under the new 
system the "girls invariably acquire better color and improve 
in health." 

But with a system whose possibilities for harm as well as 
for good are so striking as the new efficiency, we are justi- 
fied in asking for more specific data, /^l.e burden of proof is 
upon the new system to show that its marvelous results have 
been attained by legitimate means, as in the case of the care- 
fully observed pig-iron handlers, without extra strain upon 
the vitality of the workers. 

As applied to women, scientific management is so recent 
and has, as yet, affected such a comparatively small number, 
that it is perhaps unreasonable to expect much accumulated 
evidence. An open-minded and painstaking investigation 
into the effects of scientific management upon working 
women was recently made by Miss Edith Wyatt, and yielded 
results more or less inconclusive as to the effect on health. 
In three large establishments studied, the new management 
seems to have "resulted fortunately for the health of the 
workingwomen in some instances and unfortunately in 
others." To this impartial observer "the best omen for the 
conservation of the health of the women workers under 
Scientific Management in the cotton mill was the entire 
equity and candor shown by the management in facing situ- 
ations unfavorable for the women workers' health, and their 
sincere intention of the best practicable readjustments."* 

* Clark and Wyatt, op. cit., pp. 260 and 266. 
205 



FATIGUE ANt) EFFICIENCY 

What we need as regards both men and women (and the 
only answer which will allay the suspicions aroused by scien- 
tific management) is more knowledge as to the ultimate 
physical adjustment of the workers to the heightened in- 
tensity of their tasks. 

This was a subject which preoccupied the attention of 
the man who was in some sort a forerunner of the efficiency 
engineer — Ern^t Abbe. He, too, was a student of working 
capacity. He; too, sought the optimum in which men accom- 
plished most iiE the shortest space of time. But he was con- 
cerned with the effects of heightened intensity upon the de- 
velopment of his workers not only as economic vessels and 
units of production, but as men and citizens. 

Now, it is clearly self-evident that the efficiency engineer 
desires the permanent welfare of his employes. Permanency 
of the labor force is a part of efficiency, since the training of 
employes represents a concrete investment of money, time, 
and effort. Scientific management would brand as essentially 
inefficient such management as that in many department 
stores, where the army of employes shifts almost like an army 
of tramps. In one large and well known department store 
in Boston, for instance, during a single year, from among 
less than 1,000 regular employes, 708 left after employment 
averaging fourteen weeks.* Only 279 worked an entire year. 
Such a record, resulting largely from underpay, is a fair gauge 
of inefficiency. The ** system of drive" also, which merely 
keeps replacing its workers as they are used up or worn out 
by overwork and unrelieved intensity of effort, is condemned 
by the engineers as essentially inefficient. They aim to set 
tasks which the workers may accomplish and "thrive under.'' 
In comparison with this, the difference in Abbe's attitude 
towards his workers was only a matter of emphasis. Yet, 
as we all know, nothing is in the end more potent or rev- 
olutionary than the intangible spirit which animates a new 
system and sets its tone, and of this emphasis upon the work- 

* This did not include the temporary employes engaged for the 
Christmas season. 

206 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

ers as independent social units, scientific management has 
still much to learn. 

The practical difficulties of gauging the individual ad- 
justments to work are undoubtedly huge. But it is the 
business of scientific management to approach such prob- 
lems of employment in the same spirit which has solved the 
vexed problems of equipment. 

What observation of the workers is comparable to the 
genius for both details and underlying principles shown in the 
maintenance of belting, in a railroad shop described by Mr. 
Harrington Emerson? The care of belting at one of the main 
shops had cost about $12,000 a year, or $1,000 each month. 

" It was so poorly installed and supervised that there was 
an average of twelve breakdowns each working day, each 
involving more or less disorganization of the plant in its parts 
or as a whole. . . ." 

Scientific management then entered: 

"The worker in actual charge of belts, a promoted day 
laborer, was given standards, and took his directions from a 
special staff foreman, only one of whose duties was knowl- 
edge as to belts. The foreman had received his knowledge and 
ideals from the general chief of staff, who had made belts a 
special study, and this general chief of staff had been inspired 
and directed by a man who had made a nine years' special 
study of belts and who was the greatest authority in the 
world on the subject. The belt foreman had as much of this 
knowledge at his call as he could absorb, but he in turn was 
in immediate contact with each individual belt, with the 
machine it was on and with the worker using the machine. 
The chief of staff learned as much from the belt foreman as 
the belt foreman learned from the chief of staff. The belt 
foreman learned as much from the machinists as they learned 
from him. The cost of maintaining belts fell from $1,000 a 
month to $300 a month; the number of breakdowns declined 
from twelve each working day to an average of two a day, 
not one of them serious.''* 

* Emerson, Harrington: Efficiency as a Basis for Operation and Wages, 
p. 61. Published by The Engineering Magazine, New York, 1909. 

207 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Here we have the greatest authority in the world sought 
as consultant for the life of belting. What first class author- 
ity, nay, what specialist at all, is called in as consultant for 
the lives of mortal men and women singularly responsive and 
singularly influenced by the new and unstudied forces re- 
leased by the new system of production? 



4. SCIENTIFIC MANAGEMENT AND COLLECTIVE 
BARGAINING 

The solution of these problems, connected with the de- 
termination of strains upon the workers, will probably be 
contingent upon the solution of another, which it is the re- 
proach of scientific management to have left so far unsolved. 
This is its relation to labor organization; its failure to enhst 
the forces of a devotion as passionate as the instinct for self- 
preservation itself. 

In a recent valuable paper on "Organized Labor's 
Attitude Toward Industrial Efficiency,''* John R. Commons 
observes that the conflict between unionism and scientific 
management is found at the point where management weakens 
the solidarity of the labor unions. Where, for instance, the 
principle of individual bargaining replaces collective bar- 
gaining, the instinctive and reasonable hostility of labor 
arises. It is true, as evidence showed before the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission, that in a number of important 
establishments, union and non-union men have worked 
peaceably under the new management.! Nor is there 
any reason why they should not do so. The hostility 
of labor which resents the stop-watch of the engineer, his 
impersonal and unfeeling measurement of human powers in 
mechanical and psychological terms, is bound to yield to tact 
and persuasion. This is a hostility bred of sentiment, which 

* The American Economic Review, Vol. I, No. 3. September, 191L 
t Tabor Manufacturing Company of Philadelphia; Canadian Pacific 
Shops at Angus, Montreal; Manhattan Press of New York; Plimpton 
Press of Norwood, Massachusetts, and contract work under Frank Gil- 
breth and others. 

208 



THE NEW SCIENCE OF MANAGEMENT 

it is reasonable to suppose that time and education may 
gradually dissipate. But the unionist's desperate dread of 
losing his hard-won collective bargaining power (the essential 
basis of his solidarity) can be met only by "converting this 
craving for harmony and mutual support, as well as the im- 
pulse of individual ambition, into a productive asset/'* 

The material results of industrial efficiency are such that 
the new system is inevitably bound to spread and aflFect the 
fortunes of a constantly growing number of wage-earners, 
men and women. This is the reason why its attitude towards 
collective bargaining is of such vast consequence now, while 
the relations between the engineers and the unions are still 
uncrystallized and in process of formation. 

The unions themselves have, on the whole, failed as yet 
to grasp the significance and inevitableness of the new order 
of production. They have confused its outward forms and 
economies, such as the bonuses, with the old system of 
"drive." They often resent, as indeed it is only human at 
first to resent, the enforced substitution, however desirable, 
of new habits for old. They have belied the system and wil- 
fully closed their eyes to its marvelous possibilities; but in 
such opposition the forces of unionism are beating against a 
dead wall. Scientific management is bound to triumph with 
them or despite them. Labor has thus before it a unique 
opportunity, still largely unrecognized, to strengthen its 
cause and to gain for itself a fair share in the new benefits of 
science. Its bitter experience in the past, especially in rela- 
tion to new inventions such as the introduction of machinery, 
whose benefits capital and not labor has so largely absorbed, 
explains in part the opposition of labor to scientific manage- 
ment. 

The forces of repression so threaten unionism on all 
sides, perverting even industrial efficiency itself to their ma- 
lign uses, that the leaders of the new order, free to realize its 
wider implications and benefits to laborer as well as to em- 
ployer, are under special obligations to spend their best ef- 

* Commons, op. cit., p. 472. 
14 209 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

fort Upon this, doubtless their most difficult problem. *' Lib- 
erty/' said a true lover of his race, " does not fail those who 
are determined to have it'' :* and the same is true of justice. 

"The fundamental defect," as Professor Commons puts 
it, "is the failure to investigate first the bargaining relations 
and then to organize those relations in such a way that con- 
flicts of opinion and interest will be furnished a channel for ex- 
pression and compromise; and then, last of all, to work out 
the standards and records under the direction of and sub- 
ordinate to this organization of the bargaining relations. I 
do not pretend to say how this shall be done. It also is a 
matter for investigation in each case. 1 only contend that 
the individual bargain should be eliminated as far as possible 
and the collective bargain substituted."! 

So far as concerns the legislative restriction of working 
hours which our study has led us to advocate, the new effi- 
ciency is no obstacle or check, but rather an incentive. 

It represents the progressive employers whom the state 
benefits together with their employes, in checking the less 
efficient and unscrupulous competitors. Excessive hours, 
like overtime and under pay, are marks, often unrecognized, 
of inefficiency. That scientific management itself has short- 
ened the workday in fair proportion to the increased produc- 
tivity of its workers, no one can justly maintain. In regard 
to both hours and conditions the new system has still to share 
its marvelous gains more equitably with labor. In the pres- 
ent status of our industries, therefore, where the true effici- 
ency is still exceptional, legislation to restrict the working 
day is still a cardinal need. 

* "Liberia non tradisce i volenti." — Garibaldi, 
t Commons, op. cit., p. 471. 



2IO 



VIII 
THE ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

WE have now reached a more technical aspect of our 
subject which needs close consideration — the ad- 
ministration of our labor laws. For in the end the 
whole test and crux of labor legislation — indeed its whole 
excuse for being — is precisely its enforceability and enforce- 
ment. We do not seek laws limiting the hours of labor for 
the sake of having them on the statute books, nor for any 
academic purposes whatever. We seek them purely for the 
sake of securing adequate control of the length of the work- 
day. What then are the essential desiderata for enforcement? 
What assists and what hinders the factory inspectors in their 
difficult office of administering these statutes, particularly 
that statute which combats industrial fatigue by limiting 
the hours of labor? Our inquiry narrows itself down to this 
specific question. We must consider what kind of laws tend, 
on the whole, to get themselves best enforced. 

It is in this connection that the employment of women 
at night and in the evening after the day's work plays so im- 
portant a role. Overtime work may, in fact, be called the 
key to the whole matter of regulating the hours of labor. 
More than 30 American states have enacted laws prohibit- 
ing, in various degrees, the employment of women more than 
a specified number of hours. But only three states — Massa- 
chusetts, Indiana, and Nebraska — have set a legal closing 
hour after which employment is illegal. Moreover, many 
states, as we shall see, allow various exceptions for overtime 
which interfere gravely with the enforceability of their laws. 
The difficulties of inspection become almost insuperable. 

21 I 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



Let US first make clear the distinction between the rigid 
law which prohibits overtime and night work, and the elastic 
law which does not. 



1. THE RIGID LAW: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT IN 
MASSACHUSETTS 

The rigid or non-elastic law is one which provides fixed 
boundaries for working hours. It protects women from work- 
ing after a specified hour at night, and more than a given 
number of hours by the day or week. The best exemplar of 
this kind of law in the United States is the Massachusetts 
statute which prohibits the employment of women in textile 
mills more than ten hours in one day, or more than fifty-four 
hours in one week, or before six o'clock in. the morning or 
after six o'clock in the evening. 

A moment's thought will show the advantages for en- 
forcement of laws thus rigidly framed. The law is final. Its 
provisions are clear cut. Employers, employes, and inspec- 
tors know without disagreement or argument what constitutes 
a violation. Work continued after the specified closing hour 
is conclusive evidence of violation. The factory inspector 
can see at a glance, without further machinery, whether or 
not employes are being illegally kept at work. 

The Massachusetts textile law has not been hastily 
enacted. It is the fruit of almost forty years of experience. 
After two commissions of investigation in 1866 and 1867, the 
first Massachusetts law for adult women was enacted in 1874. 
From that date to the present day there has been slow but 
steady progress making the law more and more rigid and 
definite in its requirements, as experience proved how enforce- 
ment was hindered by the laxness of the earlier statutes. It 
is worth while to trace this course of legislation in Massachu- 
setts, since the whole case for an exact and rigid law with 
fixed legal opening and closing hours, rests not on any theory 
but on the direct evidence of experience. No arguments 
could be more telling than the fact that our oldest industrial 

212 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

State, like England before it, has had to amend its laws deal- 
ing with the hours of labor steadily in the direction of greater 
rigidity and exactness. 

The first statute for adult women enacted in Massa- 
chusetts prohibited their employment in manufacture more 
than ten hours in one day and sixty hours in one week. But 
this law was inoperative for some years because a fine was 
prescribed only for its "wilful'' violation — a loophole through 
which obviously any offender could easily escape. The law 
of 1874 was "practically not in operation until in 1879 when 
the word 'wilfully' was stricken out by chapter 207 of that 
year."* 

The law of 1874 had also allowed two other exemptions 
which added greatly to the difficulties of enforcement. This 
was in permitting overtime after the ten-hour day, in order 
to make good any time lost for repairs within the same week, 
or in order to make one day in the week shorter. 

" The time devoted to starting and stopping machinery 
was absurdly prolonged. Again, where a factory ran an 
eleven-hour day, each woman and child was required to 
leave for half an hour in each half day, but her neighbor tended 
two sets of machinery during her absence — 'doubling up' 
this was technically called."! 

In order to meet these evident defects in the operation 
of the law, various amendments were accordingly passed. 
In 1880t the posting of a notice was required, stating the 
daily hours of work; in 1886§ it was required that the notices 
should contain an additional statement of time allowed to 
stop and start machinery, and the time given for meals. 
Even this amendment proved too lax. In the very next 
year, 1887, the law was again amended || to require the post- 

* Report of the Convention of the International Association of Factory 
Inspectors, 1894, p. 65. 

t Massachusetts Labor Legislation. S. S. Whittlesey. Supplement 
to the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 
January, 1901, p. 13. 

X Laws of 1880, chap. 194. § Laws of 1886, chap. 90. 

II Laws of 1887, chap. 280. 

213 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ing of the exact hours when work began and stopped and also 
hours when meal-time began and ended. 

The practice of lengthening the day's work by "doub- 
ling up'' was also attacked in 1887.* In factories where five 
or more women began work at the same time, it was required 
that meal-time should be given them at the same hours, 
without imposing additional work upon women who began 
work and had their meals later. 

Another important amendment enacted in 1887 aimed 
to correct another evasion of the law which the inspectors 
had found very general. 

"The most trivial accident to the machinery which, in 
itself, might not have entailed an appreciable loss of time, had 
again and again been made the pretext for much lengthened 
overtime employment."! 

This abuse was attacked by allowing overtime for repairs 
only when stoppage lasted over thirty minutes, and after a 
full written report had been sent to the chief inspecting 
official. A special fine was prescribed for false reporting. 

Such were some of the successive amendments enacted 
to assist the enforcement of the law by making its technical 
requirements more rigid. More important still were suc- 
cessive enactments cutting down the period of hours within 
which the legal workday was allowed to fall. 

In 1890t for the first time legal opening and closing 
hours were set for the day's work. This was a step of far- 
reaching importance. The absence of a fixed closing hour 
had previously been the most serious obstacle to the enforce- 
ment of the law. It allowed women to be employed by night 
as well as by day. Moreover, it made almost unenforceable 
the ten hours' limitation of work. So long as women might 
be employed until any hour of the night at will, it was prac- 
tically impossible for the inspectors to detect violations. Un- 
less they remained actually on the premises they could not 

* Laws of 1887, chap. 215. f Whittlesey, op. cit., p. 14. 

t Laws of 1890, chap. 183. 

214 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

know when work stopped. The law of 1890, therefore, pro- 
vided that the ten-hour workday must fall between 6 a. m. 
and 10 p. m. The employment of women in manufacture 
was prohibited before and after those hours. 

Even this limit of hours, however, proved inadequate 
for enforcement. So long as it was permissible to employ 
women ten hours at any time between six o'clock in the morn- 
ing and ten o'clock at night (a period of sixteen hours), it 
was still exceedingly difficult to enforce the law effectually. 

Moreover, a practice grew up known as "swapping." 
One manufacturer would employ women ten hours between 
six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, and 
another manufacturer would employ them additional hours 
up to ten o'clock at night. This, of course, entirely destroyed 
the effect of the law. Hence, after many defeats and more 
than a dozen years' agitation by the trade unions and other 
interested persons, the so-called "overtime bill" was passed 
in 1907.* This provides that in Massachusetts' greatest 
manufacture, the textile industry, women may not be em- 
ployed before six o'clock in the morning nor after six o'clock 
— instead of after ten o'clock — in the evening. This rigid 
provision, which copies the still more definite British textile 
act, has finally been successfully enforced. 

Accompanying these successive efforts to cut down the 
period within which the legal workday must fall, there have 
been successive reductions of the legal day's and week's 
work. In 1883t the ten-hour day was extended to women 
employed in mechanical and mercantile establishments. In 
1892t women's hours of labor in manufacturing and mechan- 
ical establishments were reduced to fifty-eight in one week. 
Eight years later, in 1900, § the same reduction was made for 
women in mercantile establishments, excepting that retail 
stores were exempted from this provision during December. 
In 1904 the exemption was repealed || and work was limited to 

* Laws of 1907, chap. 267. f Laws of 1883, chap. 157. 

J Laws of 1892, chap. 357. § Uws of 1900, chap. 378. 

II Uws of 190i, chap. 397. 

215 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



fifty-eight hours a week during the whole year. In 1908* the 
week's work in manufacturing and mechanical establish- 
ments was reduced to fifty-six hours. t Finally, in 1911, the 
weekly allowance of hours was reduced to fifty-four.J 



2. THE RIGID LAW: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT IN GREAT 

BRITAIN 

In this consistent sequence, extending through a long 
series of years, Massachusetts has followed the earlier ex- 
perience of England. We find there, extending over an even 
longer period, a similar movement towards shorter and more 
rigidly defined hours, in the interest of enforcement. 

In England the necessity of having fixed opening and 
closing hours was recognized in the very first effective statute 
limiting hours of labor. This was the British act of 1833 
which forbade the employment of young persons under eigh- 
teen years in textile mills between 8.30 p. m. and 5.30 a. m., 
or more than twelve hours in any one day. There were 
other regulations for young children which need not be con- 
sidered here. 

The British law of 1844 was the first statute in any 
country to limit the working hours of adult women. It ex- 
tended to them the provisions of the act of 1833, thus pro- 
viding for all women employed in textile mills a maximum 
number of working hours and a period of rest at night be- 
tween specified hours. From the beginnings of legislation 
it was realized that the effective enforcement of any limita- 
tion of hours by day was dependent upon the establishment 
of a fixed closing time at night. 

The act of 1847 reduced women's hours of labor in 
textile mills to ten hours in one day. But the advocates of 
restriction, led by Lord Shaftesbury, were defeated in their 

* Laws of 1908, chap. 645. 

t Except that in any establishment "where the employment is by 
seasons," the week's work may be fifty-eight hours, if the total number of 
hours in the year does not exceed an average of fifty-six hours a week. 

J Laws of 1911, chap. 484. 

2l6 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

attempt to have work at night prohibited between 6 p. m. 
and 6 a. m. instead of the original terminal hours. The 
experience of the factory inspectors showed very early, what 
was shown later in Massachusetts, that it was almost im- 
possible to enforce the law effectively, so long as it was per- 
missible to employ women at any time within a period of 
fifteen hours, that is, between 5.30 a. m. and 8 p. m.* It 
was realized that the textile law would be practically non- 
enforceable until a so-called ''normal day" should be estab- 
lished. This meant that the legal workday should be re- 
quired to fall between specified hours and within a fixed 
period of time, just equal in duration to the legal workday 
plus meal times. 

Accordingly, in 1850, further legislation remedied this 
defect in the textile law. It provided that women might be 
employed ten and one-half hours in the day, and it provided 
also that the workday must fall in the twelve-hour periods 
between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. or 7 a. m. and 7 p. m., with one 
and one-half hours off for meals. Under this arrangement 
the "normal day'' between the fixed opening and closing 
hours exactly coincided with the ten and one-half hours of 
labor allowed, plus meal hours. It also made possible a 
twelve-hour period of rest at night. 

Subsequent acts have still further reduced the length of 
the workday and have made the British textile law as nearly 
definite and exact as is humanly possible. Work must fall 
between 6 a. m. and 6 p. m. or 7 a. m. and 7 p. m., with two 
hours off for meals on week days ; and on Saturdays it must 
fall between six o'clock in the morning and twelve o'clock 
at noon, or seven o'clock in the morning and one o'clock in 
the afternoon, with one half hour off for meals. It may not 
begin or end on the half hour. 

* See a similar complaint by the New York Mercantile Inspector in 
the year 1910. "The part of Section 161 relative to the hours of labor 
of females from sixteen to twenty-one years of age, is one of the most diffi- 
cult provisions of the law to enforce. . . . The provision calling for 
ten hours' work between the hours of 7 a. m. and 10 p. m., allows a period 
of fifteen hours per day in which to perform ten hours' work." Report 
of the New York State Department of Labor, 1910, p. 132. 

217 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Of the eflFects of these rigid provisions on both industry 
and labor, one of the foremost English economists writes 
with enthusiasm. 

"How potently/' says Mr. Sidney Webb, "the addi- 
tional freedom which the law thus secures, to master as well 
as to man, has reacted on the eificiency of the industry is, 
at the opening of the twentieth century, one of our proudest 
boasts. In spite of the keenest foreign competition, the 
Lancashire cotton mill, in point of technical efficiency, still 
leads the world, and the Lancashire cotton spinner, once 
in the lowest depths of social degradation, now occupies, as 
regards the general standard of life of a whole trade, perhaps 
the foremost position among English wage-earners."* 

Following the first textile legislation, the acts were slowly 
extended to take in other industries, such as print works 
(1845); bleaching and dyeing (1860); lace works (1861); 
bake houses (1863); earthen ware, lucifer matches, percus- 
sion caps and cartridge packing, paper-staining and fustian 
cutting (1864). Between 1867 and 1907 the acts were 
still further extended by taking in many other subsidiary 
branches of industry and the so-called "workshops," where 
work is done by hand. 

3. THE ELASTIC LAW: HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT IN GREAT 

BRITAIN 

In all the various so-called "non-textile" acts which 
followed the original textile legislation, the same general 
principle was followed, providing for a maximum number of 
working hours by day, between fixed hours before and after 
which it was illegal to employ any women, and a period of 
rest at night. But the general laxness of the non-textile acts 
and the many exceptions allowed have proved as damaging 
to enforcement as the rigidity of the textile acts proved 
helpful. 

The non-textile acts have nominally prohibited night- 

* Hutchins, B. L., and Harrison, A.: A History of Factory Legislation. 
Preface by Sidney Webb, p. x. 2nd Edition revised. London, King, 19U. 

2l8 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

work and have provided for a fixed workday; but in a large 
number of trades these restrictions have been deHberately 
brought to naught by allowing special exceptions up to a 
late hour of the evening. 

Thus, for instance, the general act tor non-textile fac- 
tories provides that women may not be employed therein 
more than ten and one-half hours in one day, and that em- 
ployment must fall in the twelve-hour periods between 6, 7, 
or 8 a. m. and 6, 7, or 8 p. m., with one and one-half hours 
allowed oflF for meals. But in certain trades overtime is 
allowed for a variety of reasons, such as press of work at 
certain seasons, or when the material to be manufactured 
may be spoiled by weather. In such trades women may be 
employed twelve hours in one day and as late as 10 p. m.; 
that is, employment is supposed to fall within the fourteen- 
hour periods between 6, 7, or 8 a. m. and 8, 9, or 10 p. m., 
with two hours allowed off for meals. 

The experience gained in the enforcement of the textile 
law was ignored. The laxness, or margin of supplementary 
hours allowed for evening overtime in the non-textile laws, 
has long been not only a hardship to the workers but a 
constant obstacle to the enforcement of these more lax 
statutes. The legal permission to employ women until 
ten o'clock in the evening has led to uncontrollable illegal 
employment after that hour. The difficulties of enforce- 
ment have been practically insuperable. In this, inspectors 
and all fair-minded observers agree.* 

Gradually, however, this state of affairs has been found 
intolerable. It has been realized that evening overtime 
must be curtailed and the closing hour must be set earlier, 
if the non-textile acts are to be made of practical benefit. 
Beginning with the Consolidating Act of 1878, therefore, 
we find the beginnings of a change in this direction. From 
among many, we may cite a few examples of the gradual 
stiffening of the non-textile acts and the restriction of over- 
time work. 

* See Part 1 1 of this volume, pp. 464-472. 
219 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

The act of 1878 allowed women to be employed over- 
time in non-textile factories, as described above, 48 days 
during the year and on five days in any week. In the act 
of 1895 such overtime work was reduced to 30 times during 
the year and permitted on only three days of the week. 

Similar overtime employment has been allowed also for 
articles of "perishable nature.'' This exception includes 
such places of employment as fruit-preserving establish- 
ments. In the act of 1878 such employment was allowed 
therein 96 times during the year and on five days in the week. 
In 1895 such overtime was cut down to 60 times during the 
year, and in 1901 it was further reduced, being allowed only 
50 times during the year, and on not more than three days 
of the week. 

By a retrograde movement a special amendment had been 
inserted into the act of 1891, exempting from all operation 
of the acts, "the process of cleaning and preparing fruit 
so far as necessary to prevent the spoiling of the fruit on 
its arrival at a factory or workshop, during the months of 
June, July, August, and September.'' This wholesale ex- 
emption allowed women to be employed unlimited hours, by 
day or night, on certain processes in the fruit preserving 
establishments. Though the exemption was meant to apply 
only to "cleaning and preparing fruit on arrival," its effect 
was to nullify totally the laws governing hours of labor in 
those establishments. The legal permission to work un- 
limited hours on certain processes led inevitably to the illegal 
employment of women in all processes. 

Of a similar consequence from the exemptions granted to 
the fish-curing trade, the British Chief Inspector of Factories 
wrote in discouragement in 1901 :* 

"Starting with an exemption for one process, that of 
* gutting, salting, and packing,' the industry would seem to 
have shaken itself gradually free from control, until now we 
find fish that have been in salt for several weeks dealt with as 

* British Sessional Papers. Vol. X, 1901. Report of the Chief 
Inspector of Factories and Workshops, pp. 338-339. 

220 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

perishable articles. Given plenty of time and unsuitable 
surroundings, every article of food is to some extent perish- 
able, and when a herring has been kept in salt for some weeks 
there is no reason for working on it at night except the reason 
that the day will bring other work, and in this seems to lie 
the cause of much of the late and irregular hours of the fish- 
curing trade. . . !' 

Under the British law, however, the Home Secretary is 
empowered to issue " special orders,'' extending or restricting 
the overtime exemptions. After twelve years of agitation by 
the factory inspectors and others against the abuses of over- 
time work and the impossibility of enforcing these useless 
statutes in fruit-preserving establishments, a special order 
was issued by the Home Secretary in 1907. This was in line 
with all previous experience, which had proved that laws 
governing the hours of labor cannot be enforced without a 
fixed opening and closing hour. The order prohibited em- 
ployment of women in fruit-preserving establishments be- 
tween 10 p. m. and 6 a. m. This still leaves a very long work- 
day in these establishments, but an effective step has been 
taken toward ultimate protection of the workers by the 
prohibition of night work. 

Another interesting example of the gradual tendency to 
restrict evening overtime work and limit the workday more 
strictly by an early closing hour is shown in the history of 
British legislation regarding the laundries. Before 1895 the 
laundries had not been subject to the Factory Acts. In 
the act of that year they were included for the first time, 
but instead of being governed by the same hours of labor 
as other establishments, a different and unenforceable set of 
hours was prescribed for the laundries. No closing hour was 
set, so that the fourteen-hour workday permissible under the 
law might be and was worked either by day or by night. It 
was not until a special act was passed in 1907 that women 
employed in laundries obtained protection at all comparable 
to that of women in other occupations. 

This law still permits a very long working day and work- 

221 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ing week (sixty-eight hours), and exemptions of many kinds 
still defeat its effective enforcement. But a beginning has 
been made by providing that the workday must end at 9 p. m. 

In their report for 1909, the women factory inspectors 
noted that the number of complaints of excessive hours in 
laundries was steadily declining, showing how the fixed and 
earlier closing hour was facilitating the enforcement of the 
law. " It may be hoped," says the latest edition of the stand- 
ard history of British factory legislation, "that the act of 
1907 will be a step towards the normal day which the ex- 
perience of generations in regard to other industries has 
shown to be in the best interests, not only of the workers, but 
of the trades concerned.''* 

A fourth employment (besides non-textile factories, 
fruit-preserving establishments, and laundries) in which a 
special laxity of hours has been legal until recently, are the 
flax scutch mills. In the Consolidating Factory Act of 1878 
and earlier, these mills were totally exempted from all re- 
strictions of hours by night as well as by day, provided that 
no children or young persons were employed therein, and 
provided that employment did not continue longer than six 
months in the year. In 1907 this special exemption was 
repealed and the flax scutch rriills included in the scope of 
the textile acts, in order to bring the British laws into con- 
formity with the terms of the Berne Convention of 1906 on 
night work, to which Great Britain had been a party.f 

Thus the history of the factory acts in Great Britain 
shows as conclusively as in Massachusetts, how the laws 
limiting the workday have had to be consistently made more 
exact and more rigid, in the interest of enforcement. The 
process is still far from complete. Twenty years ago, Mr. 
Sidney Webb pointed out the anomaly in differentiating 
textile from non-textile laws. When the textile factories 
were first singled out for regulation, the cotton trade was 

* Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 256. 

t Bulletin of the International Labour Office. English Edition. Vol. 
II, No. 1, 1907. Page 38. 

222 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

practically the only great industry employing women and 
children, and work therein was far more exacting than in any 
Other industrial employment. But with the increase in the 
number of workers and intensity of work in non-textile em- 
ployments, the distinction has become purely arbitrary. Its 
abandonment and the inclusion of non-textile occupations 
in the stricter statutes are only matters of time. Overtime 
employment of all young persons under eighteen years has 
been prohibited since 1895. British legislation moves 
"slow, how slowly," but the best opinion in England holds 
that "the overtime exception is doomed.'' 

4. ELASTIC LAWS IN THE UNITED STATES 
England is thus slowly emerging from a past phase of 
industrial experience and legislation. Overtime favors to 
special interests are going out. But meanwhile, in the 
United States they are, to some extent, coming in. 

This refers particularly to one industry whose quite 
unrecognized physical hardships have been dwelt upon in a 
previous chapter. Six states (four of them within the year 
1911) have enacted laws which limit women's hours of labor, 
but in which the canneries are totally exempted. These 
states are California, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Utah, and 
Washington.* Unlike the British and Continental legisla- 
tion, which at least attempts to fix the amount and extent of 
overtime allowed for perishable articles, the American laws 
exempt the trade entirely from any restriction of hours. 

So, too, in Connecticut, Louisiana, and New York, 
mercantile establishments are by statute exempted from all 
restrictions upon the working hours of women during the 
Christmas "rush."t In these cases, women are totally de- 

* Similar action has been taken in 1912 by Maryland, New Jersey, and 
New York. 

t In Connecticut between December I7th and 25th (provided employer 
gives seven holidays with pay); in Louisiana during twenty days before 
Christmas; in New York between December 18th and 24th, applying to 
girls between sixteen and twenty-one years. Similar exceptions previously 
existing in Massachusetts and Oregon were repealed, respectively, in 1904 
and 1909. A similar exemption was enacted in New Jersey in 1912. 

223 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

prived of protection when it is most urgently needed. But 
we need not here dwell at length upon such total exemptions, 
since they do not affect the enforcement of laws, which we are 
now considering. In these cases there is no law; hence there 
can be no enforcement. But these exemptions are the more 
deplorable because they mark a departure from previous 
usage in America. 

In the United States the slower and more cumbrous 
British method of legislating for one industry at a time has 
been replaced by a more reasonable and inclusive system. 
We have seen that Massachusetts requires an earlier closing 
hour in textile mills than in any other occupation; but in no 
case has an American law restricting women's hours of labor 
been limited to any one special industry. Laws governing the 
hours of labor in manufacture have included all manufacture. 
Broadly speaking, the American usage has been to include all 
industries in the laws. With the recent exception of canneries 
and Christmas trade, the injurious custom of granting over- 
time to special industries has not obtained. 

But other exceptions and laxities in American laws have 
been as disastrous for enforcement as the overtime provisions 
for special trades abroad. The most flagrant of these is the 
almost universal absence of a fixed legal closing hour, to 
which we have previously referred. 

It is a startling fact that only three American states 
(and only one of them a great manufacturing state) have pro- 
hibited women's employment at night — a form of work which, 
as we shall see in a subsequent chapter, all the civilized na- 
tions of Europe have striven to abolish by international treaty. 
Indeed, the laws of California, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, 
and Wisconsin specifically state that work may be so arranged 
as to permit the employment of women for eight or ten hours 
at any time during the day or night. Consequently, some 
years ago an enterprising mill owner in the state of Wash- 
ington attempted to employ the same women almost twenty 
consecutive hours in a mill (from noon on one day to near 
noon on the next day, with an intermission at midnight). He 

224 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

maintained that the two periods of ten hours were divided 
into two days' labor by the convenient Hne of midnight. 
Fortunately the commissioner of labor interpreted the law 
otherwise and put a stop to this particular form of exploita- 
tion. 

But in all those states which limit women's employment 
without fixing a closing hour, night work is entirely legal 
and often customary. Moreover, the fixed closing hour has 
been found indispensable not only to check the employment 
of women at night, but to make possible the limitation of 
work by day. The two things are practically inseparable.* 
Hence all those states which fail to provide a legal closing 
hour must have maximum difficulties in enforcing their 
laws. 

Besides the absence of a legal closing hour, other laxities 
in the American laws help to defeat their enforcement. 
Thus eight statesf are satisfied to prohibit more than a fixed 
amount of work during the week, leaving the separate days' 
work on various pretexts wholly unrestricted. If work ends 
(or is supposed to end) early on Saturday or on any one day, 
the other days may be as long as the employer pleases, pro- 
vided that the total week's work does not exceed the specified 
number of hours. 

Such a statute is obviously intended to afford to working 
people a half holiday on some one day of the week and to 
compensate employers for such a half holiday by allowing 
employes to work longer on other days. But in practice the 
intent of the statute is easily evaded. In some New York 
mercantile establishments, for instance, the day's work is 
lengthened by overtime, and instead of giving a compen- 
sating half holiday the employer complies technically with 

* Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans 1' Industrie. Rapports sur 
son importance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Prof. Etienne 
Bauer, p. viii. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

t Arizona (applying to laundries only), Connecticut, Georgia, Maine, 
Minnesota, New Hampshire, Rhode Island (all applying to manufacture); 
New York (applying to mercantile establishments for girls between sixteen 
and twenty-one years). In Louisiana and Pennsylvania the hours are 
unrestricted on Saturdays in mercantile establishments. 

15 225 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the Statute by allowing employes to come to work a single 
hour later in the morning of one day! 

Moreover, how enforce such a statute? Any one can 
see how disastrous for enforcement it must be. The par- 
ticular value of the rigid textile laws of Massachusetts and 
England is that they are automatic and tend to be more or 
less self-enforcing. Precisely the opposite is true of the 
shifting schedule of hours. When an inspector finds women 
employed in the evening, he has no means of knowing whether 
the long day will be compensated by a shorter day later in 
the week, so that the total week's work may not exceed the 
number of hours allowed by law. 

"The claim is always made,'' says the New York Mer- 
cantile Inspector, "when employes are found working over 
ten hours per day, that it is for the purpose of making a 
shorter day of some one day of the week. This compels the 
inspector to prove the total number of hours per week, and 
makes it much more difficult. ... To prove the actual 
hours worked per day or week is almost impossible unless 
we secure the aid of the employe. The fear of losing their 
employment has deterred many employes from rendering 
assistance."* 

It is out of the question for the inspector to return each 
day to see that a shorter compensating day is allowed. With- 
out an army of inspectors and a degree of supervision such 
as exists nowhere in the world, it is impossible to enforce a 
law made up of exceptions. 

This is the reason why such a statute as the New York 
factory law is so thoroughly unsatisfactory. This law was 
amended in 1907, so as to copy precisely the most lax and 
unworkable portions of the British non-textile factory acts. 
The New York factory law sets no closing hour for women. f 
Moreover, it allows overtime after the ten-hour day, but 
limits work to twelve hours. The law permits an employer to 

* Report of the New York State Department of Labor, 1910, p. 132. 

t The provision which prohibited employment of adult women in 
factories between 9 p. m. and 6 a. m. was held unconstitutional by the New 
York Court of Appeals in 1907. People v. Williams. 189 N. Y. 131. 

226 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

work his women employes twelve hours a day on five days 
a week regularly during the whole year; it permits him to 
work them twelve hours a day on three days of the week if 
he does so " irregularly/' that is, not as a regular rule. 

Even further concessions to irregularity are made. 
When it is difficult to fix the weekly hours of labor in advance 
"owing to the nature of the work/' the law permits employers 
to dispense with posting a printed schedule showing the re- 
quired working hours for each day of the week. This posting 
is a mechanical device which, as we saw in discussing Massa- 
chusetts, has been found indispensable for enforcement, be- 
cause the presence of persons on the premises at any other 
hour than those stated in the printed schedule is prima facie 
evidence of violation. Precisely when this provision is most 
necessary, when overtime is most sought and the difficulties 
of inspection are greatest, the New York law allows the posted 
schedule of the week's work to be omitted by permit of the 
commissioner of labor. 

When we realize that the total number of factory in- 
spectors in New York state is 80; that they are charged with 
the inspection of all the factories in the state (over 30,000 in 
1910), all the stores, all the tenements licensed for home work 
or applying for license; that they must enforce the labor laws 
regarding the fencing of dangerous machinery, the ventilation 
and sanitary condition of workrooms, as well as those which 
provide for the inspection of tunnels, for the payment of 
wages, for the enforcement of the eight-hour law on public 
works, all the child labor laws, and others besides — it is 
apparent that a law to limit hours of labor, so full of exemp- 
tions, so little calculated to be enforceable, sets the inspectors 
a genuinely impossible task, and must remain, more or less, 
a dead letter. 

It is true that in New York state the difficulties of ad- 
ministration are greater than in other states, on account of 
the larger field to be covered and the far greater number and 
variety of establishments and employes. But the conditions 
are not essentially different in other states. 

227 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

5. TWO TESTS OF EFFICIENCY 

What then is the general state of administration in the 
United States? Can we fix upon any general tests of effi- 
ciency? In so large and complex a field we are again forced 
to limit ourselves to a few definite points of discussion. From 
among many possible items we may choose two, as fairly 
good indices of intelligence and ability in administering the 
laws. The first of these is the character of the yearly printed 
report of the state labor bureau or department; the second, 
its means of gauging the effect of industrial occupations on the 
health of the workers. 

(a) The Annual Report 

To many persons our first item may not seem a fair 
test of efficiency. The yearly printed report seems a mere 
formality, a conventional requirement, which has resulted 
in libraries full of dead statistics and verbiage. But if the 
statistics are not dead nor the comments mere verbiage! 

In Great Britain and other foreign countries the yearly 
report has been found an essential and effective, though in- 
direct, aid to administration. In the first place, the report 
is a yearly public accounting, a yearly focus or review, which 
discloses the internal working of the inspection department. 
In a word: it turns on the light. It reveals the department's 
efficiency or inefficiency. It acts as a valuable check upon 
the field work, since it is based upon the inspector's daily 
activities. A good report presupposes and indeed necessi- 
tates an adequate system of supervision, daily reporting, and 
standardized record keeping by the field inspectors, and 
where such a system is lacking the annual report reveals 
it unmistakably. 

Secondly, the yearly report has been found an invaluable 
aid to enforcement by helping to form intelligent public 
opinion. We are dealing here with a public office — the ac- 
tivity of public officials, peculiarly dependent upon the ap- 
proval of the community for effective work. In communities 

228 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

where people in general are interested and alert as to the 
welfare of working people, the laws tend to get enforced with 
a minimum of friction and a maximum of efficiency. It 
follows that publicity is one of the important weapons of 
efficient administration. We are not proposing that law and 
enforcement should wait upon the vagaries of public opinion. 
Public opinion is often unintelligent and reactionary, and the 
labor laws should be just far enough in advance of it to force 
up the standards of the backward and unenlightened em- 
ployers. But all that makes for a wider general knowledge 
of the facts at issue — industrial conditions, working hours, 
work accidents, and the like — helps to form that enlightened 
public opinion without which labor laws, in a democracy, 
cannot in the long run be enforced. 

Thirdly, the yearly factory reports have been found not 
only efficient aids to the administration of existing laws, but 
perhaps the most valuable means of securing better laws. 
As we have seen, successive factory laws have not been based 
upon theories or generalities but for the most part have fol- 
lowed some insistent demand for the correction of specific 
abuses. Abroad, the factory inspectors have been in a 
position to furnish such facts to legislative bodies. They 
have made available a fund of information gained from 
official investigations and experiences. 

We have seen that since 1833, when the first English 
inspectors were appointed and were charged to report on the 
condition of the workers and the operation of the laws, a 
more or less continuous record of industrial history has come 
down to us. What record of industrial conditions and of the 
operation of our factory laws do our American factory reports 
yield, or will they leave to posterity? 

Let any student who wishes to form an opinion on this 
subject read a year's files of American factory reports. It 
will not be possible to read a current year's file, for many of 
the states do not publish current reports, although their 
value for remedial action depends upon the freshness and 
genuineness of the information they furnish. By the time 

229 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

our State factory reports have been printed, the information 
contained therein is often several years old. For instance, 
in 1909, the latest available Illinois report was for 1905. The 
report of the Massachusetts state inspectors of health for the 
year ending November 1, 1908, was published at the close 
of 1910. Eight states publish biennial reports and their 
news is inevitably one year late. 

It is true that these delays in printing are not, in the 
first instance, due to the inspection force. The chief in- 
spector or head of the labor department shifts the blame for 
the delay on to the state printer. Yet this delay is essentially 
an index of the efficiency of the labor department, and it has 
been shown that if sufficient pressure is brought to bear, these 
reports can be issued in time. This was illustrated in New 
York state in 1905, when an efficient commissioner of labor 
determined that his report should be published at the close 
of the year which it purported to describe. His report and 
recommendations to the legislature were accordingly issued 
on time, while the tables and statistical portions of the de- 
partment's work were necessarily delayed until later. This 
procedure has ever since been followed in New York state, 
whose reports in substance, as well as time of issuance, differ 
commendably from most other publications of the state 
labor departments. 

The belated publication of the American factory reports 
obviously destroys the three-fold function which, as we have 
pointed out, they should fulfill: revealing the internal or- 
ganization of the inspection department, forming public 
opinion, and furnishing material for constructive legislation. 

Moreover, the contents of these reports are, for the most 
part, little calculated to accomplish these purposes. No 
report is efficient which does not tell at least the following 
elementary facts concerning the workers: 

(1) The number and occupations of men, women, boys, 
and girls found at work. 



230 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

(2) The ages of the minors, the issuance of ''working 
papers," and other data relating specifically to the employ- 
ment of children. 

(3) The times, places, and nature of violations of the 
law. 

(4) The methods of dealing with such violations by 
warnings, prosecutions, or the like. 

(5) The number and disposition of prosecutions actually 
brought to court, including the amount of money collected 
in fines and penalties. 

(6) The nature of occupations deemed dangerous to 
health, the number of workers found therein, and (as far as 
possible) the effects of the work. 

All these things must be known in order to gauge the 
effectiveness of the laws, and the points in which they are 
adequate or inadequate. Yet few state reports contain such 
accurate, specific, and current information. The opinions 
of the inspectors, for instance, on the value and workability 
of their respective state laws are almost totally lacking. 

Only a few years ago a striking exhibition was given, not 
alone of the extraordinary ignorance of the chief labor official 
of a great state, but also of his open animus against the labor 
laws which he was appointed to enforce. The report of the 
Pennsylvania chief factory inspector for the year 1907 ap- 
peared in 1908, the year in which the United States Supreme 
Court rendered its famous decision in the Oregon ten-hour 
case, upholding the right of a state to protect its working 
women by limiting their hours of labor.* Shortly before 
that decisive judgment was to be handed down, the chief 
factory inspector of Pennsylvania officially declared his hos- 
tility to a similar Pennsylvania law, on the ground that it 
was, in his opinion, unconstitutional. " 1 have yet to find a 
single instance," he takes pains specifically to write,t "where 
any court of last resort has upheld" such a statute — ignorant 
of four earlier decisions upholding the constitutionality of 

* For a full discussion of this decision see Chapter IX, page 250. 
t Report of the Pennsylvania Chief Factory Inspector, 1907, pp. 10 and 11. 

231 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

similar laws by the Supreme Courts of four other states, 
Massachusetts, Nebraska, Washington, and Oregon! The 
impropriety of such an official attack upon the Pennsyl- 
vania law was the more glaring because an earlier Pennsyl- 
vania act limiting women's hours of labor had been previously 
upheld in a strong and illuminating decision by the Superior 
Court of Pennsylvania.* 

Owing to conditions of which the foregoing is an ex- 
treme example it has come about at any time of need that, 
instead of the responsible officials, private investigation, 
without proper powers, opportunities, or privileges of ob- 
servation, has had to furnish facts and figures about labor 
conditions. 

Thus, since the first permanent child labor committee 
was formed in New York City in 1903, the entire American 
campaign against child labor has been hampered by having 
to depend almost wholly upon private investigation of the 
facts, to secure laws protecting children from premature 
work. In state after state private investigators have had 
to learn the extent of child labor, the conditions under which 
children have been employed, the effects of premature work 
upon health and morals and industry — all those facts which 
the official inspectors should have been publishing as the 
bases of legislation. Not until the first volume of the federal 
investigation of working women and children was published 
in 1910, was there any comprehensive study of the children 
employed in the cotton mills. Moreover, the facts and sta- 
tistics gathered by private investigation are often considered 
open to the charge of personal bias. Government investi- 
gation is impersonal; its reports carry greater weight because 
they are held to present wholly uncolored facts. 

* Commonwealth v. Beatty. 15 Pa. Sup. Ct. 5, 15. 



232 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

(b) The Observation of Health in Industrial Establish- 
ments 

A second almost universal failure in administering labor 
laws concerns the observation of the health of working people, 
as affected by their occupations. The whole justification, 
legal and moral, of laws such as those limiting the hours of 
labor, prohibiting the employment of women and minors in 
certain occupations, providing sanitary regulations, seats for 
girls and women, and the like, is their necessity for the health 
and welfare of the workers. Yet so elementary has been our 
conception of administering these health statutes, that we 
have practically not yet begun to test the value of medical 
inspection of work places. It is true that the labor laws have 
not required the appointment of physicians as inspectors, 
except in a few instances which we will next discuss. But the 
lack of the most rudimentary observation of the health of 
the workers is a legitimate reproach to every labor department 
which makes any pretense of inspection. 

A beginning has been made in New York state to cope 
with the difficult problems affecting health in industrial 
occupations by the appointment of one physician to act 
as inspector. During his first years in office the medical 
inspector has had to specialize chiefly on the single subject 
of ventilation and the obscurer pollutions of the atmo- 
sphere in factories and stores. 

In Massachusetts, too, an attempt has been made to 
provide medical observation of the workers. In 1907 the 
office of state inspector of health was created under the 
Massachusetts state board of health, and 15 such inspectors 
were appointed. Besides other duties they are required 
to enforce various sanitary and hygienic regulations in fac- 
tories, to inform themselves as to the health of minors in 
factories and the prevalence of tuberculosis and other dis- 
eases amongst factory workers. 

Thanks to a careful and detailed system of record keep- 
ing, the reports of the Massachusetts inspectors of health, 
together with a previous investigation by the state board of 

233 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

health, have given the first official American returns on many 
unhealthful processes of manufacture.* 

One of the most important duties of the Massachusetts 
inspectors of health has been to assist the state board of 
health in enforcing the new and epoch-making law of 1910 
concerning the employment of minors. This provides for 
the exclusion of minors under the age of eighteen years from 
any occupation or process of manufacture deemed by the 
board sufficiently injurious to health. Accordingly, many 
processes have been studied with a view to determining their 
effects upon young persons. For example, the manufacture 
of rubber goods was specially scrutinized, and some stages of 
the work were found unfit for minors. In rubberized cloth- 
ing factories, the medical inspectors found young boys em- 
ployed at work which required them to spend from one-third 
to one-half of their entire working time in doubled-up posi- 
tions crawling underneath the "spreader'' machines, breath- 
ing over-heated air vitiated by naphtha fumes. Their heads 
were protected from the heat of the machines by planks 
covered with asbestos. 

Following these and similar reports from the inspectors 
of health, regarding the injurious nature of many different 
kinds of manufacture, the state board of health issued an 
order on July 10, 1911, declaring 24 different processes of 
manufacture to be injurious to the health of minors, within 
the meaning of the law. These processes involved exposure 
to poisonous or irritating dust, gases, and fumes, and the 
employment of minors under eighteen years of age was 
accordingly forbidden therein. This included such work as 

* Memorial on Occupational Diseases prepared by a Committee 
of Experts and presented to the President of the United States, September 
29, 1910. American Labor Legislation Review, Jan., 1911, p. 137. 

Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health upon the Sanitary 
Conditions of Factories, Workshops, and other establishments where persons 
are employed. 1907. 

Report on the Work of the State Inspectors of Health, Nov. 1, 1907, 
to Nov. 1, 1908. From the 40th Annual Report of the Massachusetts 
State Board of Health. 

Ibid. Nov. 1, 1908, to Nov. 1, 1909. From the 41st Annual Report 
of the Massachusetts State Board of Health. 

234 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

that of the "spreader boys" in the rubberized clothing fac- 
tories. 

Another valuable service performed by the medical 
inspectors was inaugurated in Worcester. Beginning with 
one public spirited employer, the medical inspector has se- 
cured the co-operation of numerous others in combatting the 
growth of tuberculosis among their employes, by paying their 
expenses at the state sanatorium for a shorter or longer period.* 

These initial services suggest how great a part the medi- 
cal inspector may fill in helping to prevent deterioration of 
health among factory workers. But in many most important 
respects the Massachusetts system has been no test whatever 
of medical inspection. The inspectors of health are paid to 
give only part time to this work; many at the same time 
continue private practice as physicians. They have so much 
more work assigned to them than they can perform that in 
January, 1911, some medical inspectors appointed in 1907 
had not yet completed a tour of their districts. f 

The so-called examination of children employed in fac- 
tories is especially inadequate. For instance, from among 
43,270 working children reported as ''inspected" during the 
year 1907-1908, only 521 were found ill or physically unfit 
for the work they were performing. This surprising percent- 
age (scarcely more than one-tenth of 1 per cent) is explained 
by the method of ''inspecting" minors. One inspector, for 
instance, reported: 

"A total of 4,881 minors were examined. Of this 
number, 706 were inspected without conversing with them, 
while passing through the factory."| 

* Up to April, 1911, 34 industrial establishments signified in writing 
their willingness to take part in this campaign. Twenty-seven employes 
in all have been aided. See Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, 
No. 96, Sept., 1911, p. 488. Hanson, Wm. C, M.D.: Attitude of Massa- 
chusetts Manufacturers Toward the Health of Their Employes. 

t Report of the Commission to Investigate Inspection of Factories, 
Workshops, Mercantile Establishments and other buildings. Boston, Janu- 
ary, 1911, p. 60. 

t Report of the Work of the State Inspectors of Health, Boston, 1907, 
p. 86. 

235 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Efforts have recently been made to obtain places within 
the factory for more adequate examinations. 

Moreover, the inspectors of health have nothing what- 
ever to do with the enforcement of that statute which our 
study has shown to be perhaps most important : the law which 
protects the workers against industrial fatigue by limiting 
their working hours. When the office of inspector of health 
was created in 1907 to enforce sanitary regulations, the en- 
forcement of all other factory laws, including the limitation 
of the hours of labor, was left as before to the factory inspec- 
tion department of the Massachusetts district police. No 
co-operation has existed between the two departments. The 
commission appointed in 1910 to investigate the inspection 
of factories, etc., found that: 

"The two groups of inspectors go their separate ways 
without assisting each other at all in the enforcement of the 
laws." 

"The factory inspectors and the health inspectors in 
the same district as a rule never meet each other. Many 
inspectors testified to this fact before the Commission. 
Some of these inspectors assigned to the same district act- 
ually met for the first time at the Commission's hearing.''* 

Thus the appointment of physicians as additional in- 
spectors of factories in Massachusetts has hitherto been a 
tentative experiment — valuable chiefly in demonstrating the 
wide possibilities of medical inspection. 



6. SOME TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS IN FACTORY 
INSPECTION 

But the character of administration and inspection is 
receiving a new attention in many quarters. It has long been 
a matter of common knowledge that, in general, the caliber 
of the men and women who administer the labor laws in the 

* Report of the Commission to Investigate Inspection of Factories, 
etc. Op. cit., pp. 57 and 67. 

236 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

United States has been utterly inadequate for their duties. 
Until 1911 only three states — Massachusetts, New York, 
and Wisconsin — required inspectors to pass civil service ex- 
aminations before appointment, and by an extraordinary 
exemption Massachusetts obliged preference to be given to 
Civil War veterans, without examination, as inspectors of 
the district police. This exemption is no longer observed, 
but in December, 1910, the veterans still numbered 12 out 
of 28 factory and building inspectors.* 

In place of the most elementary technical fitness, chiefs 
of departments as well as subordinates have, for the 
most part, been appointed for political or personal reasons. 
Hence, the first needs are to make all appointments to the 
inspection service subject to civil service examinations of 
the proper character, and to assure tenure of office during 
good conduct, instead of allowing inspectors to be displaced 
at any moment by political favoritism. Other urgent needs, 
to improve the service, are to pay more adequate salaries 
than the present ones; to grade inspectors according to 
their ability and to promote them for good service — a system 
which has been begun with good effects in New York state. 
Such and similar changes would tend towards securing a 
more valuable class of inspectors. 

There is ground for encouragement in the yearly in- 
creasing number of men and women of higher caliber who are 
becoming available for an improved service. The social 
aspects of labor and labor legislation newly studied in colleges 
and universities throughout the country, have turned the at- 
tention of many young men and women to the possibilities 
in this field. Special schools in New York, Boston, Chicago, 
Philadelphia, and St. Louis are training students each year 
for social work, who should be available for administrative 
positions in the service of the state as they are for private 
societies. But we need even more than this. We need 
inspectors equipped with technical training. 

* In 1911, New Jersey enacted a law requiring civil service examinations 
for inspectors. 

237 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

At the opposite pole from our disorganized and untrained 
system we find such an extremely elaborate service as that 
in Prussia, where there has been a regular program of training 
since 1897. Members of the staff, which numbers over 270, 
are appointed for life. They must have three years of 
technical study in such subjects as mechanics, mining, or 
chemistry, and a year and a half of probationary practice in 
the service. This period is followed by one and one-half 
years of university study in law and political science, and a 
written and oral examination in Berlin by an examining 
board instituted for this special purpose.* 

Such extreme requirements are cited here merely by way 
of contrast. They do not appear as yet to have resulted in 
an ideal enforcement of labor laws in Germany, and they 
would clearly be impossible in this country. But it is be- 
coming more evident each year that our service is in urgent 
need of inspectors of special knowledge and training. 

No one but a physician can study the manifold relations 
of industries to health, and inspect working people (adults 
as well as minors) in order to learn the physical effects of 
industrial fatigue, dangerous occupations, unsanitary con- 
ditions and the like. The federal report on the white lead 
industry in the United States shows that dangerous processes 
regulated abroad are not only unregulated here but so carried 
on as to be "much more dangerous'' to health than they 
are in Europe. f In such occupations a special limitation 
of working hours is called for, as well as sanitary require- 
ments. We have seen that the most eminent physicians 
in Canada were opposed to more than six hours' work each 
day for girls in the exacting telephone service. In Germany 
today adult men are prohibited from being worked more 
than two hours at a stretch in certain dangerous processes, 

* Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 89. July, 1910. 
Veditz, C. W. A., Ph.D.: Child Labor Legislation in Europe, p. 192. 

t Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 95. July, 1911. 
Hamilton, Alice, M.A., M.D.: White Lead Industry in the United States, 
p. 190. 

238 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

such as filling and emptying oxidizing chambers in lead 
works.* 

This is indeed the prime value of the medical inspection 
of work places: to check industrial disease at its source. It 
not only removes to tuberculosis sanitaria and the like, 
workers who have acquired disease at their occupations, but 
it performs a more constructive service. It discovers the 
causes of industrial infection or overstrain in the dusty and 
poisonous and straining processes of manufacture; and the 
improvement of such conditions is more important than the 
cure of the sick. It protects the workers before they have 
been injuriously affected. Within the next decade scien- 
tific study should show the dangers of occupations peculiar 
to our country and modes of manufacture, and should 
indicate in what occupations the day's work must be radi- 
cally reduced to conserve the workers. 

Beside such medical study of industry we need other 
technical study as well. The ventilation and lighting of 
workrooms, guarding of dangerous machinery, and the 
forced removal of the noxious by-products of manufacture, 
are engineering problems directly related to the health of 
working people. They have hitherto been left almost wholly 
to the discretion of untrained lay inspectors. As might have 
been expected, little progress has been made in their solution. 
But at least these things have come to be recognized, even 
in America, as unsolved problems for professional study and 
investigation. Fixed standards of safety, sanitation, ventila- 
tion, and lighting have not yet been agreed upon, but will be 
perfected during the next few years, and will assist greatly in 
the effective protection of working people. 

It is in this connection that profound interest attaches 
to the new scheme of administration recently devised by the 
state of Wisconsin. In 1911 an industrial commission was 
created which superseded all the former machinery of inspec- 

* Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 95, p. 170. 
Factory Regulations of the Chancellor of the German Empire Regarding 
Lead and its Products. 

239 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

tion and enforcement. It consists of three members, ap- 
pointed for periods of six years each by the governor of the 
state. The novelty of this commission Hes in its extra- 
ordinary range of power. It is not only charged to administer 
and enforce a list of specified statutes, such as the laws relat- 
ing to child labor and school attendance, women's employ- 
ment, laundries, bakeries, fire-escapes, and the like. In addi- 
tion, the commission is practically enjoined to see to it that 
all work places shall be safe and sanitary. It is specifically 
empowered to ascertain, fix, and enforce standard safety 
devices, and all other means of protection for the *' life, health, 
safety, and welfare" of employes in all places of employment. 

No charter could be wider than this. Under its provi- 
sions the commission may appoint not only the lay factory 
inspectors, but experts of every technical description, to 
adopt and modify standards of safety commensurate with 
the ever changing mechanisms and processes of industry. 

Such a sweeping and almost revolutionary scheme of ad- 
ministration obviously carries with it potentialities of abuse 
as well as of extraordinary value. The very breadth and 
looseness of the powers conferred makes their effectiveness 
peculiarly dependent upon the spirit which informs them. 
The present personnel of the commission encourages the 
most hopeful auguries.* But time alone can show whether, 
under the Wisconsin scheme, the routine difficulties of the 
subordinate inspectors will be lessened or increased in en- 
forcing the standards, and in withstanding the pressure of 
employers for concessions and modifications in the name of 
their "practical needs.'' 

However that may be, and whatever the value of leaving 
free and unfixed the standards of sanitation and safety, so 
far as concerns our special subject (the curtailment of in- 
dustrial fatigue by the limitation of working hours) we need 
rigid statutes precisely for the sake of that enforcement which 
is their raison d'etre. If the experience of England and 

* Prof. J. A. Crownhart, chairman, Prof. John R. Commons, Mr. J. D. 
Beck. 

240 



ENFORCEMENT OF LABOR LAWS 

Massachusetts has proved anything, it has proved that rigid 
laws hmiting the workday have been enforceable, and that 
the lax laws have not. 

Even when trades are differentiated and varying hours 
of labor must be fixed according to their degrees of injurious- 
ness to health, such special regulations should be as nearly 
fixed and definite as can be settled by legislation. 

Here, however, the question arises as to the rights of 
legislatures. Under their constitutional powers, how free are 
they to enact measures limiting the length of the workday? 
To answer this, we must next consider some recent decisions 
of the courts on the scope of labor legislation. 



i6 241 



IX 
LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

IN any discussion of the laws which Hmit an adult's 
hours of labor, we must constantly bear in mind the 
fact that no law is final in the United States until it has 
passed the review of the courts. Physicians may agree as to 
the urgency of curtailing the workday, legislators may enact 
such statutes in deference to a public demand, but unless the 
judges are convinced of their harmony with the federal and 
state constitutions, such laws are declared unconstitutional 
and are void. 

At first sight, the question of constitutionality appears 
to be remote from the course of our discussion, a region of 
legal technicalities and abstractions into which the layman 
may scarcely venture, and in which such human forces as 
hygiene and social welfare must count as nil. But in fact 
the reverse is true. In the last resort, the constitutionality 
of these laws is determined by no other considerations than 
such medical and social facts as those which we have dis- 
cussed at length. 

1. THE POLICE POWER 

In order fully to understand this relation, we must keep 
in remembrance the old truth that government, indeed society 
itself under any form of government, means restraints of one 
kind or another. By the inexorable law of compensation, so 
soon as men join in any bonds of union, they must surrender 
some portion of their individual liberties in return for the 
solidarity which protects them. The state's right to impose 
such restraints or regulations upon the individual is called 
the police power. Under this power, all our laws for the 

242 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

protection of health, safety, and welfare have been enacted 
and sustained by the courts; laws such as the quarantine and 
liquor laws, those establishing hospitals and insane asylums, 
laws which require fire-escapes in hotels, schools, and fac- 
tories, the fencing of dangerous machinery, and a host of 
others. 

The police power is thus of widest application and has no 
definite limitations. Its applications have been repeatedly 
defined by the courts in a very large number of cases. ** From 
the mass of decisions,'' says Professor Freund, one of the fore- 
most writers on this subject, "it is possible to evolve at least 
two main attributes or characteristics which difi'erentiate the 
police power; it aims directly to secure and promote the pub- 
lic welfare, and it does so by restraint and compulsion."* 

Hence, in reviewing legislation the courts must decide 
whether any specific statute is justifiable in order to pre- 
serve the public health, safety, and welfare, or whether it 
infringes unduly upon personal liberties. Here we reach the 
core of our difficulty and the obstacle which has stood in the 
path of labor legislation. 



2. THE "FREEDOM OF CONTRACT" THEORY 

It is a fact of common knowledge that after our civil 
war, the fourteenth amendment of the Federal Constitution 
was adopted, and similar provisions in the state constitutions, 
declaring that "no state shall deprive any person of life, 
liberty, or property without due process of law." 

By one of life's ironies, this wellknown phrase has been 
interpreted by the courts as prohibiting the protection of 
working people in sundry ways, on the ground that their 
individual rights are interfered with. Labor is property, said 
the judges. The laborer has the same right to sell his labor 
and to contract with his employer as any other property 
owner. Hence the laws limiting hours of labor, or regulating 

* Freund, Ernst: The Police Power, p. 3. Chicago, Cailaghan and 
Co., 1904. 

243 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

labor in other ways, are in conflict witii the fourteenth 
amendment, because they interfere with the laborer's indi- 
vidual property rights. 

This theory of the so-called "freedom of contract" was 
not invoked against labor legislation until twenty years after 
the fourteenth amendment had been adopted for a very 
different purpose. In 1886, the Supreme Courts of Illinois 
and Pennsylvania first threw out certain labor cases as un- 
constitutional on this ground.* 

The "freedom of contract" assumption has so vitally 
affected the very existence of the laws in which we are con- 
cerned, that we may well glance at the six or seven most im- 
portant decisions of superior courts on the subject, handed 
down during the last sixteen years, between 1895 and 1911. 

The fallacy of this thesis has been of late so much dis- 
cussed that it need not delay us long. It is coming to be 
recognized that since employes do not stand upon an equal- 
ity in bargaining power with their employers, the so-called 
" right" to contract for a day of any length is purely theoret- 
ical. The worker in fact obeys the compulsion of circum- 
stance. No one can suppose that young women working in 
the box factories of Chicago, discussed in a previous chapter, 
need or desire to be protected in their "right" to labor over- 
time nine months in the year; or that women in laundries 
should be "free" to work fourteen hours or more during 
several days of the week. They have, in fact, no choice or 
freedom in the matter. The alternative is to work or starve. 
To refuse means to be dismissed. Modern industry has 
reduced "freedom of contract" to a paper privilege, a mere 
figure of rhetoric. 

The First Ritchie Case. Yet this was precisely the 
ground upon which the judges of the Illinois Supreme Court 
in 1895 declared invalid an Illinois eight-hour law for women 
employed in factories. In what is known as the first Ritchie 

* Freund, Ernst: Constitutional Limitations and Labor Legislation, 
pp. 51-71. Address before the Third Annual Meeting of the American 
Association for Labor Legislation, New York, December, 1909. 

244 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

case,* they declared that the police power of the state did 
not sanction such an interference with the working hours of 
adult women. There was no "fair, just, and reasonable 
connection between such limitation and the public health, 
safety, or welfare proposed to be secured by it/' Hence the 
law was declared unconstitutional; and for thirteen years, 
until this decision was practically over-ruled by the United 
States Supreme Court in 1908, it retarded the movement for 
the protection of working women in all our states. 

The Case of Holden v. Hardy. Curiously enough, 
three years after the decision in the Ritchie case, a law limiting 
men's hours of labor was carried to the federal Supreme Court 
at Washington and was sustained.! This case involved the 
validity of the Utah law fixing an eight-hour day for men 
employed in mines and smelters. The court handed down a 
decision which has become almost a classic in its clear state- 
ment of the broad principles at issue. It is true that the 
employments regulated were clearly dangerous to health, 
safety, and welfare. Therefore the limitation of hours was 
more obviously justifiable under the police power. Indeed, 
the court based its favorable decision on the fact that work 
in mines and smelters was not like ordinary employment, 
but that the operative was 

" . . . deprived of fresh air and sunlight and is subject 
to the foul atmosphere and a very high temperature, or to 
the influence of noxious gases." 

But the judges dealt not only with the hazards of these 
employments. They struck a loftier note which rises clear 
and strong above the technical argument. They were pre- 
occupied with something larger than the single law in dispute. 
It was the state which figured before them — a congregate 
whole which was only as great as "the sum of all its 
parts." These parts, they said in stirring words, did not 

* Ritchie V. People, 155 III. 98 (1895). 
t Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366 (1898). 

245 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Stand upon an equality with one another in the economic 
scale, and therein lay both the need and the justification of 
the state's intervention. 

X^-* But the fact that both parties are of full age, and com- 
petent to contract, does not necessarily deprive the state of 
the power to interfere, where the parties do not stand upon 
an equality, or where the public health demands that one 
party to the contract shall be protected against himself. 
The state still retains an interest in his welfare, however reck- 
less he may be. The whole is no greater than the sum of all 
the parts, and when the individual health, safety, and welfare 
are sacrificed or neglected, the state must suffer/' 

It is significant, as the court pointed out also in this de- 
cision, that such cases as the one at bar have not been brought 
by working people eager to secure their "right*' to labor any 
number of hours, but by the employers to whose advantage 
it is for them so to labor. ** The argument," said the court, 
"would certainly come with better grace and better cogency 
from the other class." 

These two decisions, then, set forth clearly the issue 
between personal liberty and the police power. In the 
Ritchie decision the judges set a theoretical freedom above 
concrete realities. In Holden v. Hardy the law appeared to be 
justified by its necessity. 

The Lochner Case. The next case to be considered 
is the only other one in which the United States Supreme 
Court has rendered an opinion as to the validity of a law 
limiting the hours of adult men in private employment.* 
This was the New York law for bakers, restricting the 
hours of labor in bakeries to ten hours in one day, or sixty 
hours in one week, overtime being allowed for the purpose 
of shortening the last day of the week. In 1901 the law was 
attacked as unconstitutional by a master baker. It was 
sustained by the New York courts and then appealed to the 

* Lochner v. New York, 198 U. S. 45 (1905). 
246 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

Supreme Court at Washington which declared it unconstitu- 
tional. 

Here we have the same court which upheld the validity 
of the Utah law dismissing the New York law as one of the 
" mere meddlesome interferences with the rights of the indi- 
vidual/' 

Where the Utah decision took a firm stand in behalf of 
those who did not " stand upon an equality," the decision in 
the Lochner case repudiates the idea that bakers are in any 
sense wards of the state.* The judges were again, as in the 
earlier Illinois case, unable to see any connection between the 
proposed limitation of hours and the public health and wel- 
fare. Bakeries, unlike mines and smelters, did not seem to 
them dangerous enough to regulate. Doubtless it will be 
genuinely surprising in the future to reflect that, in this sig- 
nificant case, a majority of the United States Supreme Court 
could find no "reasonable ground" to justify the New York 
bakers' law. A majority opinion of the New York Court of 
Appeals had dwelt upon the dangers to health arising from 
excessive hours in the heated, dust-laden atmosphere of the 
bakeries. A concurring opinion had cited medical authori- 
ties at length to show the unhealthful nature of such hours 
of work. Yet the reaction is more apparent than real. In 
substance the Lochner decision does not over-rule the court's 
previous sanction of the Utah law. The way was still left 
open for the justification of other laws limiting the workday, 
if the judges could be shown " that there is material danger 
to the public health, or to the health of the employe, if the 
hours of labor are not curtailed." 

The Williams Case and its Challenge. Unfortun- 
ately, in the next decision we are to examine, legal technicali- 
ties again predominated in the minds of the judges over the 

* In a valuable article on Legislative Restriction of Hours of Labor, 
Bulletin of the New York Labor Department, No. 46, March, 1911, John A. 
Fitch draws attention to the fact that it was Judge Peckham, who had dis- 
sented from the opinion of the court in Holden v. Hardy, who wrote the 
opinion in Lochner v. New York, 

247 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

simple facts of industrial life, of which they were evidently 
unaware. Two years after the bakers' law had been upheld 
by New York's highest court, the same bench, in the Williams 
case, declared invalid a law prohibiting the employment of 
women in factories between 9 p. m. and 6 a. m.* This case 
was of deep significance for the cause of women. It was the 
first, and is the only decision by any court, which deals with 
women's night work. As we have seen, there were in 1907 
only four state laws existent on the subject. f For our coun- 
try has lagged conspicuously behind the rest of the world in 
seeking to control night work, the form of labor most fraught 
with possibilities of injury to the human frame, particularly 
to the health of women. Yet the New York Court of Ap- 
peals deliberately ignored all the broader implications of 
the case; all those intricate social aspects of night work, its 
effects upon health and the home and general welfare, which 
European statesmen had been studying for years, and which 
had culminated in the Berne International Convention on 
Night Work eight months previous to the Williams case — all 
these wider issues were not even touched upon. We seek in 
vain for that freer air of statesmanship and understanding 
which breathes from the decision of Holden v. Hardy. In 
the Williams case the court deliberately limited itself to con- 
sidering ''solely" whether work at 10:20 p. m. (as in the case 
at bar) was injurious enough to warrant interference with 
women's "freedom of contract." They were genuinely con- 
cerned because, under the existing law, no woman could be 
employed within the prohibited hours for any period of time 
"no matter how short." % 

But the real issue did not center on this single narrow 
aspect of the matter. It stands to reason that work at 
10:20 p. m. is not in itself inherently injurious. But night 
work, as it exists in reality, does not consist of such isolated 
theoretical employment. As we have seen, it means, in 

* People V. Williams, 189 N. Y. 131 (1907). 

t In New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Indiana. 

} Italics added. 

248 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

practice, either overtime work prolonged into the evening 
after and in addition to the normal day, or employment on 
continuous night shifts. Both these forms of night work the 
judges in the Williams case expressly deplored; but in their 
anxiety to preserve women's "freedom" to work a theoret- 
ical short period after 9 p. m., on the assumption that such 
work was neither long nor overtime, they opened the way for 
precisely the evils which they themselves condemned! And 
we have had, in consequence, such formidable examples of 
night work as in the binderies running twenty-four hours at a 
stretch, quoted in a previous chapter. These have been the 
direct results, the corollaries of the Williams decision. 

Now the writer of that decision had gone so far as to 
state specifically: "I find nothing in the language of the 
section which suggests the purpose of promoting health ex- 
cept as it might be inferred that for a woman to work dur- 
ing the forbidden hours of the night would be unhealthful.'' 
Here was an explicit challenge thrown down by the learned 
writer of this opinion. If, indeed, the language of the law 
contained nothing which suggested to the court the purpose of 
promoting health, clearly that purpose should have been made 
clear, beyond the shadow of a doubt, in the law's defense. 

In defending the cases which we have reviewed up to this 
point, the arguments and citations of the lawyers had been 
almost wholly confined to the purely legal aspects of those 
actions. Briefs of counsel had discussed in infinite detail the 
power. But the point at issue had in fact wholly shifted from 
relation between the fourteenth amendment and the police 
the state's abstract right to restrict individual rights, to the 
practical necessity for every such restriction. The ques- 
tion was nojonger abstract and legal, but rather in a deep 
sense social and medical. It followed that the purely legal 
defense of these laws was falling wide of the mark. It had 
long been unreasonable to expect that judges, trained in 
schools remote from factories and workshops, should be 
conversant with those underlying practices and conditions 

249 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

which alone could justly weight the scales. The men upon 
the bench needed for their guidance the empirical testimony 
of the working woman's physician, the factory inspector, and 
the economist. They needed, in a word, to know the facts. 

For some years previous to the Williams decision, many 
persons interested in labor legislation, and particularly the 
Consumers' League, had been following in detail the in- 
fluence of successive court decisions.* In an earlier case, 
involving the validity of certain sections of the New York 
child labor Iaw,t the writer of these pages had been called 
upon to furnish the presiding judge with testimony from the 
New York Factory Inspectors' reports, relative to the social 
value of such legislation. 

Before the Williams case had been carried to the New 
York Court of Appeals,J the writer had made an effort to 
obtain some expressions of opinion from physicians, on the 
subject of women's employment at night, comparable with 
the findings of European physicians. It was hoped that 
some prominent medical men in New York might be induced 
to state their views of the physical injuries incident to in- 
dustrial night work, just as in 1892 a group of distinguished 
and public-spirited British physicians had presented to 
Parliament a memorial on the injuries from overlong hours 
in shops, in support of Sir John Lubbock's Early Closing 
Bill.§ 

But from among ten prominent New York physicians 
who were approached, only two were willing to express them- 
selves publicly. One of these was a physician grown old in 



* See Kelley, Florence: Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation. 
New York, Macmillan, 1905. Goldmark, Josephine: The Necessary Sequel 
of Child Labor Laws, Amer. Jour, of Sociology, pp. 312-325. Nov., 1905; 
Workingwomen and the Laws. Annals of the American Academy of Po- 
litical and Social Science, pp. 261-276. Sept., 1906. 

t The City of New York v. Chelsea Jute Mills. 43 Misc. 266. (1904). 

X The law had been declared unconstitutional by the Appellate Divi- 
sion of the New York Supreme Court, two out of five judges dissenting. 

§ British Sessional Papers, 1892. Vol. XII, p. 238. Among the 
signers of the memorial are such wellknown names as Sir Andrew Clark, 
Sir Richard Quain, and 298 others. See Part 11 of this volume, p. 515. 

250 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

service whose life-long practice had made him as familiar 
with the dire effects of industrial overwork as of excessive 
idleness. The other was a younger man whose active part 
in the tuberculosis campaign had brought forcibly to his 
notice some of the contributory causes of overstrain among 
working people. The striking fact in the refusal of the other 
physicians to share in any arraignment of the night shift 
or late overtime work for women, was their general remote- 
ness from the common facts of what seemed almost like a 
different order of existence. The speed, the strain, and the 
long hours of factory life belonged to a chapter of human life 
wholly outside of their own crowded and specialized lives. 
Not one of them raised the objection that a public expression 
of medical opinions might be construed as an attempt to 
prejudice the case. They were unacquainted with the facts 
at first hand and, indeed, for the most part, doubted their 
existence. 

This modest attempt, then, failed. But when, in 1907, 
the decision of the Court of Appeals in the Williams case ex- 
plicitly stated the court's inability to see the purpose of the 
law, it became more than ever apparent that a new emphasis 
was needed in the defense of labor legislation, and we awaited 
the opportunity in which to put this belief into practice. 

The Oregon Case and a New Line of Defense. 
Such an opportunity offered in the very same year. A 
laundryman was arrested for violation of the Oregon law 
fixing a ten-hour day for women employed in factories and 
laundries. The validity of the law was affirmed by the 
Oregon courts, and in December, 1907, an appeal was taken 
to the United States Supreme Court at Washington. Here, 
then, was an opportunity to present the real issue to the 
highest court in the land, concerned for the first time in its 
history with a statute limiting the workday of adult women. 
By good fortune, the active interest of a distinguished lawyer* 

* Mr. Louis D. Brandeis of Boston, who has given his invaluable ser- 
vices unpaid in these cases. 

251 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

was enlisted and he proposed to put these issues before the 
court in a new way. His argument and brief marked a radi- 
cal departure in the defense of labor laws. It confined itself 
to the tangible human elements involved — health, welfare, 
and economic efficiency.* 

In a brief of more than 100 pages, he devoted two to the 
legal aspects of the case, and over 100 to a new kind of testi- 
mony — mankind's experience, physical and moral, with re- 
spect to women in industry and the duration of their work- 
ing hours. The document was made up from the accumu- 
lated mass of British and Continental factory inspectors' 
reports, commissions and enquetes, as well as the observations 
of medical men and economists. It was well received by the 
court, which in its decision upheld the validity of the Oregon 
law. Quoting from the new empirical evidence contained in 
the brief, the court stated that it "took judicial cognizance 
of all matters of general knowledge," thus in a single phrase 
warranting the new emphasis upon practical data.f 

The decision in the Oregon case was indeed no narrow 
victory. It was the most sweeping decision ever rendered 
by the federal Supreme Court in relation to working hours. 
It was not confined to the consideration of the ten-hour day 
or to a working day of any particular length. It left to the 
states the liberty to determine what working hours were 
wholesome and reasonable. It went far beyond the statute 
at issue, which dealt with the employment of women in fac- 
tories and laundries, and looked towards the protection of 
women in other employments. In a word, the highest court 
of the nation rejected the fiction of the free contract as re- 
gards the working woman and declared that "her physical 
nature and the evil effects of overwork upon her and her 
future children justify legislation to protect her from the 
greed as well as the passion of men.'' The new method of 
defense had amply justified itself. 

* Supreme Court of the United States, October Term, 1907. Curt 
Muller V. the State of Oregon. Brief and Argument for Defendant by 
Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine Goldmark. 
tSee Part 11, p. 558. 

252 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

The Second Ritchie Case. It was again to be put 
into practice and again to be justified in the following 
year (1909), immediately after the auspicious Oregon deci- 
sion had in principle reversed the earlier Ritchie decision of 
the Illinois Supreme Court. The way was now open for laws 
protecting women from overwork, and many states enacted 
such legislation. Among others, the Illinois legislature of 
1909 provided a ten-hour day for women employed in laun- 
dries and factories. Hence, fourteen years after the first 
Ritchie decision, a new law was carried up to the Illinois 
Supreme Court for its adjudication.* 

A wholly new bench of judges were sitting in the case. 
The widespread public curiosity throughout Illinois as to the 
outcome of this case, bore witness to a new recognition of the 
large issues at stake, not only to women in industry, but to the 
state. The court in sustaining the ten-hour law was not 
deterred as the same court had been fourteen years before by 
the freedom of contract theory. All that body of ''general 
knowledge" which the federal judges had taken into cog- 
nizance, was again admitted to carry its due weight. In a 
single illuminating sentence the Illinois court also responded 
to the new emphasis upon the substantial and substantiated 
facts, remarking, "what we know as men we cannot profess 
to be ignorant of as judges." 



3. THE distinctions OF SEX 

Now among these facts known to all men and presented 
to the court, were the ill effects of industrial speeding, strain, 
and the like, upon working women, qua women. Their 
physical organization, the greater morbidity of working 
women compared with men in the same occupations, and the 
dependence of future generations upon the health of women, 
all had been dwelt upon to justify the legal restriction of 
their hours. This was because the earlier decisions, over- 
throwing the validity of women's labor laws, had denied any 
* Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman, 244 111. 509 (1910). 
253 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

special protection to women "on the mere fact of sex/' 
Women were citizens, hence their contractual powers could 
not be disturbed. Indeed the New York Court of Appeals 
went so far as to say in the face of civilized precedent, that 
"an adult woman is not to be regarded ... in any 
other light than the man is regarded, when the question re- 
lates to the business pursuit, or calling." 

This specious argument and the alleged impossibility of 
differentiating between men and women was, indeed, long 
an obstacle in the way of securing women's laws. Thus in 
England between 1874 and 1901 the factory acts were in the 
main opposed by an important wing of the women's rights 
party. Superficially viewed, the great movement to obtain 
for women, in all fields, rights from which they have been 
debarred, might appear inconsistent with the effort to pro- 
tect one sex as contrasted with the other. But this is a 
fundamental misconception. It ignores the fact that pro- 
tection of health has never been held a bar to the efficiency 
of men as citizens. 

It has yet to be suggested, for instance, that the miners 
of 13 states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Mary- 
land, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Oklahoma, Utah, 
Washington, and Wyoming — are discriminated against, be- 
cause the state restricts their working hours to eight in 
one day* for the explicit purpose of protecting the health 
of its citizens. It has yet to be suggested that the inter- 
state railroad telegraphers are less valuable as citizens than 
any other men because Congress, in 1907, restricted their 
work to thirteen hours by day and nine hours by night. 
This statute and similar restrictions in many states were 
enacted nominally to safeguard the traveling public. But 
its only excuse for being is the effect of excessive hours upon 
the operative's efficiency. These restrictions upon men's 
working hours have never interfered with their value or 
dignity as citizens. Why then, should similar restrictions — 

* Ten hours in one day in Maryland, applying to Allegany and Garrett 
counties. 

254 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 

wider and more inclusive for women — operate against their 
dignity or value as citizens? Their physical endowments and 
special functions make the protection of their health even 
more necessary than the protection of men's health; they 
need even more than men the legislative protection which, 
as Justice Brewer said in the Oregon case, "is designed to 
compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon'* them. 

It is true that, as we have seen, the restriction of men's 
hours of labor has been upheld by the courts only when the 
occupations sought to be regulated are manifestly dangerous 
to health, such as mines and smelters, or where public safety 
is directly concerned, as in railroading. Yet in so far as 
prohibition of excessive hours for men has been justified by 
dangers resulting to their health and efficiency, the argument 
for more inclusive women's laws is precisely similar. 

Fortunately this view has on the whole prevailed in 
the United States, and the steadily growing equal suffrage 
societies have taken a logical stand in defense of the state's 
responsibilities towards working people, be they men or 
women. 

Why, indeed, should these measures, justifiable on the 
broad ground of health and welfare, be in the future limited 
to women? The New York State Department of Labor has 
recently published a thoughtful review of judicial decisions 
dealing with the hours of labor of adult men.* The writer, 
John A. Fitch, has brought together the most important 
conservative dicta of the courts (typified by the Lochner 
decision overthrowing the bakers' law) and their most pro- 
gressive utterances. t He concludes that while the judiciary 

* Bulletin of New York State Department of Labor, No. 46. March, 
1911, p. 90. 

t Of such progressive utterances none are more striking than the two 
following paragraphs, taken, respectively, from decisions of the New York 
Court of Appeals and of the Superior Court of Pennsylvania: 

" In the interest of public health, of public morals and of public order, 
a state may restrain and forbid what would otherwise be the right of a 
private citizen. . . . It may limit the hours of employment of adults in 
unhealthy work, and it may he that it could prohibit the performance of ex- 
cessive physical labor in all callings." (People v. Orange County Road Con- 
struction Co., 175 N. Y., 84, 87.) Italics added. 

255 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

is, as a whole, on the side of conservatism, the advanced 
sentiments found in sundry decisions indicate ''conditions 
other than stationary/' 

In upholding the validity of many Sunday laws, the 
courts have repeatedly declared that the cessation of labor 
one day in seven is essential for health, morals, and general 
welfare. It has not yet been made manifest to the judges 
that an adequate daily period of rest for men is as essential 
as the weekly rest period. The question arises whether laws 
limiting men's hours of labor might not have a more favorable 
outlook for being sustained by the courts "if an effort were 
made similar to the effort in the Oregon and Illinois women's 
cases, to present evidence with respect to long hours of work 
in industries where men are employed." Could not such 
evidence readily be found to justify laws prohibiting the 
twelve-hour shifts in continuous industries, and requiring 
the employment of three shifts instead of two? The out- 
rageous duration of work in continuous industries * and the 
brutalizing effects of the twelve-hour day and eighty-four- 
hour week would make this perhaps the most timely legisla- 
tion for men. Some laws embodying these principles already 
exist. In Montana and Pennsylvania there are eight-hour 
laws for hoisting engineers, in mines operated sixteen hours 
or more a day; and the federal law has already been re- 
ferred to, which provides for interstate telegraphers a thirteen 
hour day in offices open only by day and a nine-hour period 
in offices open both day and night. 



"A prohibition upon unhealthy practices, whether inherently so, or 
such as may become so by reason of prolonged and exacting physical exertion 
which is likely to result in enfeebled or diseased bodies, and thereby directly 
or consequently affecting the health, safety, or morals of the community, 
cannot, in any just sense, be deemed a taking or an appropriation of property. 

"The length of time a laborer shall be subject to the exhaustive exer- 
tion or physical labor is as clearly within legislative control as is the govern- 
ment inspection of boilers, machinery, etc., to avoid accidents, or of the 
sanitary conditions of factories and the like to preserve the health of labor- 
ers." (Commonwealth v. Beatty, 15 Pa. Sup. Ct., 5, 15.) 



* See p. 4. 

256 



LABOR LAWS AND THE COURTS 



4. THE QUESTION OF DISCRIMINATION 

One further point regarding the vaHdity of these laws 
needs comment in this brief chronicle. This concerns another 
section of the fourteenth amendment, declaring that no 
state shall "deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal 
protection of the laws/' Under this, or similar provisions 
in state constitutions, laws regulating conditions of labor 
have been declared invalid, as discriminating improperly 
between persons or classes, thus denying equal protection of 
the laws. 

Now it must be remembered that in their review of 
legislation, it is the function of the courts to determine 
whether the legislature had any reasonable grounds for its 
action ; not whether the laws as enacted are inherently and 
in themselves good or bad, but whether the legislature was 
justified in its conclusions, as embodied in the laws. 

Obviously, in enacting any laws limiting hours of labor, 
the legislature must use its discretion in choosing among 
various alternatives, such as the number of hours to be fixed, 
the persons to be protected, and other similar points. Op- 
ponents of these laws have usually raised the contention that 
they were unfairly discriminatory, because certain persons or 
classes of persons were included or left out. 

In the Ritchie case, for instance, it was claimed that the 
law was unfair "class" legislation because it included women 
working in factories and laundries and not in other occupa- 
tions. In a more recent case involving the Michigan ten- 
hour law for women* the law was attacked as "class'' legisla- 
tion because a different class of workers were omitted. In 
both these cases the courts performed a great service by up- 
holding and reasserting the freedom of the legislatures to use 
their discretion as to the scope of the laws. " If all laws were 
held unconstitutional because they did not embrace all 
persons," said the Illinois court (quoting another decision), 
** few would stand the test." In each case the court concluded 
* Withey v. Bloem, 163 Mich. 419. (1911). 
17 257 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

that the law was not ** class'' legislation, although it did 
single out those workers who seemed to the legislature most 
in need of protection. The Michigan court again throws the 
responsibility for the scope of the law squarely upon the 
discretion of the legislature, quoting with approval from 
Cooley's Constitutional Limitations on this point, "the 
legislature must judge." The law cannot be called uncon- 
stitutional because " it does not apply to all callings.'* 

This emphasis upon the freedom of the'legislature should 
be welcome to all lovers of democracy, even though legis- 
latures, like all human agencies, may err and prove false to 
their trust. 

In point of fact, the Michigan ten-hour law which was 
sustained by the Michigan Supreme Court contains a thor- 
oughly vicious section. It excludes from the protection of 
the law all women ''engaged in preserving perishable goods 
in fruit and vegetable canning establishments." This ex- 
ception was a weak concession to a powerful interest, a 
yielding to undue pressure. Yet only a doctrine of despair 
would welcome the correction of such legislative failures 
through the agency of the courts. The remedy lies not in 
destroying the legislative functions and handing over to the 
courts a wider jurisdiction than is their right. It lies in 
raising the caliber of legislators and in bringing to bear upon 
the legislatures the power of new ideas, which, in the long run, 
never fails. For this we need, primarily, a wider study and 
knowledge of those fundamental truths which are the bases 
of our protective legislation, and which these chapters have 
sought briefly to set forth. 



258 



X 

PROHIBITION OF WOMEN'S NIGHT WORK: A 
PRIME NECESSITY 

1. THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION ON NIGHT WORK 

AS we have seen, in June, 1907, the New York Court of 
l\ Appeals by a unanimous decision struck from the 
1 \ statute books of New York the law against women's 
night work, one of the four state laws on the subject at that 
date existent.* Just eight months before, in Berne, Switzer- 
land, there had been held a memorable meeting, attended by 
official delegates from 14 European nations. This was the 
result of a quarter century's effort, a new move in labor 
legislation: an international convention of the Powers. 
The subject of the treaty chosen, according to Professor 
Raoul Jay, as one of the most urgent, most important, and 
most easily solved of labor problems, was the abolition of 
women's night work. 

These official acts, falling within the same twelve months 
at opposite poles from one another, are significant of the 
diametrically opposed mental attitudes prevalent in the 
United States and in Europe, toward the same phenomenon. 

Yet the employment of women at night is not one of the 
subjects legitimately differentiated in a democracy and under 
other forms of government. As we have trod the same path 
as our elder kin abroad in other legislation reducing the 
length of the workday, we shall sooner or later fmd ourselves 
obliged to follow their action in regard to the employment of 
women at night. But whereas abroad the prohibition of 

* These states were Massachusetts, New York, Indiana, and Nebraska. 
A New Jersey statute enacted in 1892 which prohibited the employment of 
women in factories between 6 p. m. and 7 a. m. was held repealed by a 
general repealing act of 1904. 

259 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

women's night work has gone hand in hand with the reduc- 
tion of the day's work, and a legal closing hour has been found 
an integral part of effective laws, this issue has been for the 
most part ignored in the United States. The lack of a legal 
closing hour has hampered the law enforcement in all but 
three of our states. 

We have seen that England prohibited night work in 
her first factory legislation for women in 1844. Almost a 
generation passed before any other European state took 
action. In 1864, the Swiss canton of Claris followed Eng- 
land's example and forbade the employment of women at 
night in factories. Ten years later a declaration in the Swiss 
federal constitution authorized the regulation of the hours of 
labor of all adults. The Swiss federal law of 1877 which 
followed, contained a clause prohibiting women's night work. 
Many attempts were made later, from time to time, to ob- 
tain overtime privileges for various industries, but, wrote the 
eminent Swiss factory inspector Fridolin Schuler twenty- 
five years later, " no one ever dared to suggest the repeal of 
the night work law." (Ces dispositions protectrices n'ont 
jamais ete touchees . . . personne n'osa s'attaquer au 
travail de nuit.)* 

The prohibition of women's night work had been intro- 
duced by the same F. Schuler in 1887 to a wider audience, at 
the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography at 
Vienna. This is a body of scientists to whose work we 
have previously referred, who have met at regular intervals 
abroad, and during the past twenty years have been devoting 
their attention more and more to the problems of industry as 
well as of pure science.f 

* Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans I' Industrie. Rapports sur son 
importance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Prof. Etienne Bauer, 
Directeur de I'Office Internat. du Travail. Pp. 343-344, Jena, Fischer, 
1903. This book contains the investigations made by the International As- 
sociation for Labor Legislation into the physical, moral, and economic aspects 
of night work. It has been taken as a basis for this chapter. 

t In this connection interest attaches to the first meeting of this Con- 
gress in the United States, which is to take place in Washington, D. C, 
September, 1912. 

260 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

The next important body to discuss the employment of 
women at night was the famous International Conference on 
Labor called by the German Emperor, to the astonishment 
of Europe, in March, 1890. The Swiss federal government 
had been promoting international labor agreements during 
the eighties, and had arranged a conference to be held in 
Berne in May, 1890, when the Kaiser issued his rescript 
calling a conference in Berlin two months earlier.* The 
rescript was in some respects so radical that to many persons 
it stood for "state socialism'' — a deliberate move to forestall 
the socialist advance. Whatever its underlying objects, the 
Berlin Conference resulted in no binding agreements, but 
among its resolutions concerning the employment of women 
and children, the prohibition of night work was recom- 
mended.! 

During the next ten years the subject was discussed by 
other international meetings, and finally the International 
Association for Labor Legislation at its first meeting of dele- 
gates in 1901, determined to investigate the whole field: the 
extent and effects of women's night work in the various 
countries, and the actual economic results of prohibiting 
night work by law. A year later, following this investiga- 
tion, the association appointed a commission to devise means 
of obtaining a general international prohibition of women's 
night work, and the gradual reduction of evening overtime 
exemptions. (Le Comite national charge une commission 
de rechercher les moyens d'introduire cette interdiction 
generale, et d'examiner comment les exceptions qui existent 
encore a cette interdiction pourraient etre progressivement 
supprimees.)t 

After a year's deliberation, the commission recommended 
that the Federal Council of Switzerland be asked to initiate 

* Hutchins and Harrison, op. cit., p. 270. 

t Seven states voted affirmatively on this question: Germany, Austria, 
Great Britain, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland. Five states 
voted in the negative: Hungary, Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Portugal. Three 
states refused to vote: Denmark, France, and Norway. 

t Bauer: Preface to Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans I'lndustrie, 
op. cit., p. X. 

261 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

an international convention forbidding women's night work 
in industry. The commission recommended also that a 
memorial be sent to all the powers, setting forth the reasons 
for desiring such an international convention, which should 
assure to women who work outside of their own homes an 
unbroken period of twelve hours' rest at night, certain trades 
and processes being exempted. 

Both of these recommendations were carried out. In 
response to the invitation of the Swiss Federal Council there 
assembled at Berne, September 26, 1906, representatives of 
14 European powers: Austro-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, 
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Luxemburg, Portu- 
gal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. 

An international agreement was submitted to the Con- 
ference. It bound the contracting states to prohibit the 
industrial night work of women without distinction of age. 
The agreement applied to all industrial establishments em- 
ploying more than 10 persons. A minimum period of eleven 
consecutive hours was set for the duration of the night rest, 
to include the time between 10 p. m. and 5 a. m. in all cases. 
In states where such legislation had not previously existed, 
the period of uninterrupted night rest might be temporarily 
reduced to ten instead of eleven hours, during a period of 
three years.* 

Only two exceptions permitting night work were pro- 
vided. First, in case of "force majeure," or the interrup- 
tion of work by causes beyond the employer's control, often 
known as the "Act of God"; second, to save raw material or 
material in course of manufacture, liable to rapid deteriora- 
tion. No other concessions were made to the seasonal in- 
dustries, ever insistent for special privilege. They were not 
exempted from the prohibition of night work. A slight 
modification in their favor was permission to reduce the 
length of the night rest from eleven to ten hours during sixty 
days in the year. 

*The line dividing industry from commerce and agriculture was left 
for each country to define. 

262 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

The participating states were required to ratify this 
convention, to file their ratifications with the Swiss Federal 
Council within a specified time, and to adopt administrative 
measures for carrying out the terms of the agreement. It was 
to go into effect two years after ratification. 

By January 14, 1910, all the participating states, ex- 
cepting Spain and Denmark, had ratified the convention.* 
In accordance with a special article, the French government 
had notified the Swiss Council that the terms of the agree- 
ment were accepted for Algiers and Tunis. Similar notice 
was given by the British government for Gibraltar, the Gold 
Coast, North Nigeria, Uganda, Ceylon, New Zealand, Fiji 
Islands, Leeward Islands, and Trinidad. f Comic as it may 
appear at this date to legislate for the South Seas and for the 
Africa of romance and adventure, yet bitter experience has 
taught the wisdom of so legislating before industry is present. J 

Moreover, the night work treaty must be regarded as an 
instrument of value far beyond its own intrinsic worth. It 
marks a new era in labor legislation. For the first time the 
powers have treated on a plane with staples of commercial 
value, as legitimate subjects of international agreement and 
treaty, such hitherto neglected assets as the health and wel- 
fare of wage-earners. 

The effect of the treaty in modifying previous laws may 
be illustrated by some of the amendments of the German In- 
dustrial Code in 1908, seventeen years after the first effective 
German law governing women's hours of labor had been en- 
acted in 1891, following the International Conference of 1890. 
This first law had copied the British model in prohibiting work 
at night between specified hours, as well as prohibiting more 

* Bulletin of the International Labour Office. English edition. Vol. 
I, 1906, p. 272. The original limit set for the ratifications was December 
31, 1908; postponed to January 14, 1910. 

Additional leeway of ten years before enforcement is granted the 
following industries: first, the manufacture of unrefined beet sugar; second, 
woolcombing and weaving; third, open mining operations when climatic 
conditions stop operations at least four months in the year. 

t Ibid. Vol. VI, 1911, p. 11. 

X Bills are pending in Spain and Denmark (March, 1912). 
263 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

than a specified number of hours by day. The employment 
of women was forbidden between 8:30 p. m. and 5:30 a. m. 
and after 5 : 30 p. m. on Saturdays and days preceding holi- 
days. By the amendment of December, 1908,* among other 
changes, the period of night rest was lengthened one hour, 
work being prohibited from 8 p. m. to 6 a. m. and after 5 p. m. 
on Saturdays. At the termination of the workday, an un- 
interrupted period of at least eleven hours of rest was re- 
quired. 

Such are the general provisions. Many exemptions for 
overtime may be granted, for various reasons and varying 
lengths of time, by the German Federal Council and by the 
higher or lower administrative authorities. But the amend- 
ment of 1908 reduced .the range of many of these exemp- 
tions, and required the establishment of a closing hour in cases 
where it had not previously been required. 

Thus one section of the complex German Code gives 
special powers to the Federal Council in regard to women's 
hours of labor. For instance, in industries where there is 
seasonal pressure of work the Federal Council may grant 
exemptions forty times during the year, but the daily period 
of work must not exceed twelve hours nor eight hours on 
Saturday. 

Previous to 1908 there was no fixed closing hour for such 
exemptions. The amendment of that year specified that 
the period of rest following the workday must amount to at 
least ten consecutive hours and must include the time be- 
tween 10 p. m. and 5 a. m.j 

Again, in cases of exceptional accumulation of work, 
overtime may be granted by the lower and higher adminis- 
trative authorities a fixed number of times during the year. 
Previous to 1908 such overtime was allowed until 10 p. m. 
and a workday of thirteen hours was permitted. The amend- 

* German Industrial Code, Section 137. Bulletin of the Interna- 
tional Labour Office. English edition, 1908, p. 335. 

t German Industrial Code, Section 139 a. Bulletin of the Interna- 
tional Labour Office. English edition, 1908, pp. 337 and 338, 

264 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 



ment of 1908 limited such overtime to twelve hours in the 
day, changing the closing hour from 10 to 9 p. m., and re- 
quired that the daily period of rest must be not less than ten 
hours.* 



2. THE CASE AGAINST NIGHT WORK ABROAD 

The investigations which preceded the Berne Conven- 
tion dealt with the physical, economic, and administrative 
aspects of night work. The employment of women at night 
was scrutinized by physicians, economists, and specialists in 
labor enforcement, and was found in the first place unmis- 
takably dangerous to health. For all night work, whether 
it be carried on regularly in night shifts or irregularly in the 
evenings, has certain characteristic and unavoidable effects. 
Of these the most obvious are the loss of sleep and sunlight, 
and the hygienic argument against night work centers upon 
the inevitable physiological deficits due to this lack of sleep 
and sunlight. 

We have seen, in a previous chapter, that during work 
the chemical products of activity increase. The internal 
combustion is more active. In the famous experiment of 
the physiologists Voit and Pettenkoffer, a man was shown 
to expire almost twice as much carbon dioxide during a day 
of work as during a day of rest. But during rest at night the 
processes of tissue repair are in the ascendant. This is one 
of the reasons why loss of sleep is so detrimental to the organ- 
ism. This is also the reason why all forms of night work, 
inevitably resulting in loss of sleep, are in the long run bound 
to be injurious. 

Besides loss of sleep and rest, another characteristic 
of both night work and evening overtime is the loss of sun- 
light. Sunlight appears to benefit all our bodily functions. 
It stimulates growth and assists in the elimination of toxic 
wastes. Loss of sunlight therefore reacts disastrously. 
Animal experimentation shows that the blood of animals 

* Ibid., p. 336. 
265 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

kept in the dark suflFers a loss of the red coloring matter. 
Investigation among night workers also shows the ill effects 
resulting from the lack of sunshine in impoverished blood: 
the term ''baker's anaemia'' tells its own story.* 

More than twenty years ago the German factory in- 
spectors found a marked excess of in illness among night 
workers, as compared with day workers in similar occupa- 
tions, even though the hours of labor at night were shorter 
than by day.f The French commission of 1890, which in- 
vestigated the industrial employment of girls and women in 
France before the first eflFective French law of 1892, reported 
especially on the injuries to childbirth, and the high infant 
mortality among women employed on night shifts. J Physi- 
cians as well as factory inspectors of all nations agree that 
after a shorter or longer period, women habitually employed 
at night suffer from all those symptoms which betoken low- 
ered vitality: loss of appetite, headache, anaemia, and weak- 
ness of the female functions. 

Dr. L. Carozzi, in a more recent limited but intensive 
study of night workers in an Italian spinning mill, bears out 
the testimony of earlier investigators. The night workers 
whom he examined all showed marked signs of anaemia and 
general debility. He found among them a *' continual sense 
of fatigue, of heaviness, breakage, of exhaustion — in a word a 
sense of chronic tire, which weighs upon the workers and 
undermines their lives." § 

The injury to health from night work is the greater be- 

* Wiener klinisch-therapeutische Wochenschrift. Vol. XIII. Nr. 27, 
1906. Gardenghi, Dr. G, F. (Director of the Institute of Hygiene, Parma): 
Veranderungen des Blutes durch Nacht Arbeit. 

Ibid., No. 28, 1906. 

Proceedings of the First International Congress on Industrial Diseases. 
Milan, June, 1906. Bolettino, Dr. L. (Lecco): Sull' Influenza della Luce 
Naturale nel Lavoro, p. 100. 

t Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der mit Beauf- 
sichtigung der Fabriken Betrauten Beamten, 1889, p. 93. 

t Documents Parlementaires. Chambre des Deputes, 10 Juin, 1890. 
Annexe 649. Waddington, M. R.: Rapport fait sur le travail des enfants, 
des filles mineures, et des femmes, etc., p. 1088. 

§ Carozzi, Dr. Luigi: I Danni del Lavoro Notturno. Lavoro. Vol. 
III. Milan, 1905. 

266 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

cause sleep lost at night by wage-earners can rarely be made 
good in the daytime. In the first place, for reasons not well 
understood, sleep in the daytime appears to be generally less 
restorative than by night. It is less potent to accomplish 
its office of repair and refreshment. 

But even if day sleep could habitually compensate for 
the inversion of nature's order, it is not within the wage- 
earner's reach. Quiet and privacy for sleep by day are 
unattainable luxuries. Upon returning home in the middle 
of the night or at dawn, the workers can snatch at most a 
few insufficient hours of rest. Women who work at night 
fare particularly ill. Those who are married cannot post- 
pone the regular household necessities which await them in 
the morning, such as cooking breakfast, dressing and caring 
for the children, and the like. Unmarried women, too, 
whether they live at home or are thrown upon their own 
resources, can rarely avoid a certain amount of household 
work, which combines with the lack of quiet to make im- 
possible adequate sleep by day after night work. 

In thus destroying home life, night work militates against 
morals as well as against health. Clearly, no form of women's 
work so interferes with their domestic relations as enforced 
absence from home in the evenings, the only time when wage- 
earning families are together. Young women who work at 
night are deprived of all the restraining influences of home 
life. When the mother of a family spends the night or even- 
ing in work, disorder is almost unavoidable, and the comfort 
of the men as well as of the children dependent upon her 
ministrations, is lost. 

These, then, were some of the hygienic and moral ob- 
jections to night work found in actual experience abroad. 
The advocates for prohibition next examined its economic 
value. They found a consensus of opinion that wherever 
night work had been abolished long enough for industry to 
adjust itself to the change, prosperity had not suffered. This 
was because, in a word, night work is inferior to day work. 
Output deteriorates in both quality and quantity. Defects 

267 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

occur more easily at night, and more easily escape detection. 
In weaving and in industries where colors must be distin- 
guished, work by artificial light is never satisfactory. The 
profits of plants running uninterruptedly day and night are 
reduced by the wear and tear on equipment and the increased 
running expenses. But chief of all, they are reduced by the 
impaired efficiency of the workers. Just as after a limited 
period of overtime, efficiency steadily declines, so after night 
work the workers tend to deteriorate. Many mill owners 
stated to the investigators who preceded the Berne Conven- 
tion that in the long run night work had proved financially 
unsuccessful. 

Hence, as we have seen, the margins of overtime have 
been gradually reduced, and the laws against night work, 
first bitterly opposed in most countries, are being gradually 
accepted. The Dutch factory inspector's account of the 
gradual acceptance of the night-work law by the proprietors 
of the laundries in Holland is especially interesting.* A 
tempest of indignation was aroused, wrote T. H. Van 
Thienen, by the Dutch law of 1889, which prohibited work 
after 7 p. m. in laundries using motor power. It was called, 
as all regulation is first called, the ruin of the industry (la 
ruine de leur profession). To abandon the traditional modes 
of work, to change the hours of the arrival and delivery of 
linen, to interfere with the workers' irregular habits (I'habi- 
tude de se lever tard et de se mettre tard a Touvrage) — all 
this aroused the resentment of employers, accustomed to keep 
their establishments open until late at night. But, accord- 
ing to Van Thienen, most of these fears were imaginary 
(n'existaient que dans I'imagination), and proved to be 
groundless when work was reorganized so as to end at 7 p. m. 
as required by the statute. He reported that the law still 
needed careful watching (une surveillance rigoureuse) in 
1903, twelve years after it had been enacted, but concluded 
that the results of prohibiting night work had been "ex- 
tremely favorable." 

*Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans I'lndustrie. Op. cit., p. 304 ff. 

268 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

This account is typical of the evidence as to the operation 
of night-work prohibitions, contained in the official reports of 
the International Labour Office. The evidence all tended to 
prove that the prohibition of night work, like the reduction 
of day work, was in the long run a benefit to industry. It 
contributed to raise the efficiency both of the management 
and of the employes. 

3. NIGHT WORK IN THE UNITED STATES 

In contrast now to the Berne Convention of 1906 and the 
legislation of European states bringing their laws into con- 
formity with its terms, the status of women's night work in 
the United States is a cause for deep concern. 

We have seen that the New York Court of Appeals 
failed to apprehend its true significance. But more unfor- 
tunate than this decision (for there is good reason to believe 
that the court might take a different view if the real issues 
were more clearly brought to its attention) — more unfortu- 
nate than the court's decision, is the widespread public indif- 
ference in regard to the practice of working women at night. 

The United States was not able to take part officially 
in the Berne Convention, since the federal government can- 
not bind the individual states to enact legislation restricting 
hours of labor. But far from aiming at the same goal, — pro- 
hibition of night work, of their own initiative, — American 
states are drifting in a precisely opposite direction. 

While all the civilized (and some uncivilized) nations of 
the world are abolishing work at night, and cutting down the 
margins of overtime, American states are for the first time 
granting special overtime privileges to one great industry — 
canning — and are deliberately recognizing the employment 
of women on night shifts. The legislature of the enlightened 
state of Wisconsin in 1911 enacted its first effective law limit- 
ing the working hours of adult women,* and in the same 

* The early Wisconsin law of 1867 was not enforceable, since it pre- 
scribed a penalty only for employers who compelled women to work more than 
ten hours in one day. 

269 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Statute it legalized an eight-hour night shift for women be- 
tween 8 p. m. and 6 a. m. This provision requires that work 
at night be two hours less than the legal day's work, but it 
is none the less true that this law specifically authorizes the 
employment of women during that period of the night set 
apart by the Berne Convention as a minimum time for rest. 

Connecticut passed a law similar to that of Wisconsin 
in 1908, and bills containing similar provisions were intro- 
duced in Maryland and New Jersey in 1912.* No other 
states have specifically legalized night work for women, 
but such work is permissible, because not prohibited, in 
all other American states excepting three — Massachusetts, 
Indiana, and Nebraska. 

The forces which make for night work, — accepting the 
enactment of such legislation as in Wisconsin, defeating 
bills aimed to prohibit night work in other states, — may be 
gauged by their activities during the sessions of 1911. 

Legislatures sat in 40 states. In most of these states 
some bill was introduced affecting women's conditions of 
labor. So unpopular and so little regarded was the prohibi- 
tion of night work that in only two states — Delaware and 
New Jersey — besides the District of Columbia, were attempts 
made to include a legal closing hour in the proposed legisla- 
tion. These three bills all failed to become laws,t and while 
this fact is not in itself conclusive, — for many bills failed in 
other states, — it is significant that these bills had admittedly no 
chance of passage until the closing hour had been eliminated. 

In Delaware, for instance, the original bill prohibited all 
night work after 10 p. m. After many deliberations and 
efforts at persuasion the bill emerged from conference, 
shorn almost beyond recognition. The following places of 
employment had been specially allowed to employ women 
without restraint at night: laundries, canneries, the telephone 
service, restaurants, candy stores, ice cream saloons, and 

* Enacted in Maryland, March, 1912. 

t The Delaware bill was passed with amendments, but Gov. Pennewill 
failed to sign it. 

270 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

Stores between December 11th and 25th — all those places in 
which the employment of women at night is an entrenched 
custom. Where night work is not customary or is not at 
present needed, its prohibition was not opposed. 

Thus the special interests which desire to employ women 
at night are awake and untiring; public appreciation of the 
issue is dead or not yet born. Hence, in the United States 
today, legislation restraining employers from requiring women 
to work at night is the most difficult to secure, though the 
reduction of the day's work gains ground each year. 

So little has the subject been regarded that we do not 
even know the extent of this dangerous form of employment, 
sprung up almost like the armies of Cadmus, overnight. We 
do know that the custom of evening overtime, extending to 
late evening hours, is prevalent in most industries to a de- 
gree unsuspected by most persons. 

Reference has already been made to the appalling dura- 
tion of night work found by the federal investigators in a very 
limited study of binderies in New York City. Of 13 women 
who worked on night shifts in such establishments,the hours 
of four girls are specifically stated. They were employed 
respectively 16^, 20><, 22>^ and 24X hours once and some- 
times twice a week, during a long period of the year, that 
is, from four to almost seven months. The girl whose rec- 
ord of hours was most appalling worked 24>^ hours twice 
in 21 weeks. Her usual long day was 20}i hours.* 

Oificial reports of the outrageous duration of night work 
in laundries are also available. An inquiry into the causes of 
a strike of laundry employes in New York City was conducted 
in February, 1912, by the Bureau of Arbitration of the New 
York State Department of Labor. At public hearings, em- 
ployes testified under oath as to their hours of labor. It ap- 
peared that work until 1 a. m. was on occasions not unknown, 
and that work until midnight was more often found to exist. 

* Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the 
United States. Vol. V, p. 205. Senate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 
2d Session, 1911. 

271 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



The three following schedules of "long weeks" reported in 
the stenographic minutes of evidence,* though they need not 
be regarded as typical, illustrate to what extremes the night 
work of women in laundries is carried, when there is no legal 
closing hour for work. 



SOME INSTANCES OF EXTREMELY LONG HOURS IN NEW 
YORK LAUNDRIES 



Day of week 



Monday. . , 
Tuesday. . 
Wednesday 
Thursday. , 
Friday . . . . 
Saturday. . 



Woman who has 

worked 2 years 

in laundries 



A.M. 

12 
9 
9 



9- 
9- 



P. M. 

12 

11:30 
9:30 

7 
6: 



30 



Woman who has 

worked 5 years 

in laundries 



A.M. 

12 
9 



9- 
9- 
9- 



P. M. 

12 

11:30 
9 

7 
6 



Woman who has 

worked 11 years 

in laundries 



A.M. 



P.M. 



9a 
11 



? - 

9 

9- 8 

9- 7:30 

9- 6 



a Sometimes until 10 p. m. or later. Latest 1 a. m. 



We know also that in one great occupation — the tele- 
phone service — a host of girls and women are regularly em- 
ployed at night and all night, where only a few years ago the 
night service was performed by men and boys. It is true 
that the telephone companies fmd it necessary to make better 
provision for the comfort and safety of their night workers 
than other employers. Rest rooms are provided, and the 
night shift is not exposed to the objectionable late return 
home, being kept on duty almost invariably from 10 p. m. 
to 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. But the fundamental 
physiological objections to night work remain the same: 
the workers' lack of sleep and sunlight; their inability to 
make up adequate sleep by day. The shifting army of ** tele- 
phone girls" keeps changing; often the service holds them 



* Not yet published at date of writing, 
the New York Commissioner of Labor. 

272 



Reproduced by courtesy of 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

less than two years, a trade life of extraordinary brevity*; 
and no one is the wiser as to the effects upon them of this 
exacting occupation, of which night work is a regular incident. 

The recent federal investigation of wage-earning women 
and children gives little more than sidelights and hints as to the 
extent and effects of employment at night. But even these 
scattered data are all in accord with the facts as to health, 
morals, and efficiency found earlier by the European in- 
vestigators. ^ 

In the investigation of the cotton textile industry, mills 
were found operating at night in North and South Carolina.! 
According to the Census { there were, in 1908, 293 cotton mills 
in North Carolina; 59 of these were covered by the investiga- 
tion. Thirty-one mills operated by night, not counting two 
which had discontinued night shifts during the year. The 
number of women and children under sixteen years employed 
on night shifts was 848, nearly equalling the number of men, 
874, employed at night. In South Carolina, the investiga- 
tion covered 36 of the existing 150 cotton mills. Five mills 
were found operating at night; 188 women and children 
under sixteen years were employed, and 155 men. 

The agents of the government visited workers who were 
employed in North Carolina cotton mills during the twelve 
hours from six in the evening until six in the morning. At 
eleven o'clock in the morning they were sitting drowsily 
over scant fires, too listless to seek sleep. When they did 
lie down, the inevitable noises in thinly partitioned wooden 
houses, where every sound can be heard from room to room, 
made sound sleep impossible. "Usually they arose at four 

* The Railroad Commission of Wisconsin found that in seven large 
exchanges of the Wisconsin Telephone Co. in Milwaukee, 290 operators were 
employed on Jan. 15, 1907, with 22.72 months' average length of service; 
on Jan. 15, 1908, 407 operators were employed with 18.52 months' average 
length of service. Senate Document No. 390. Investigation of Telephone 
Companies, p. 51. 

t Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the 
United States, Vol. I, Cotton Textile Industry, p. 284. Senate Document 
No. 645, 61st Congress, 2d Session, 1910. 

t Census Bulletin No. 97. 1908, p. 10. 
i8 273 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

or five in the afternoon and again took their seats before the 
fire, too weary and sluggish to think of a walk in the open 
air/'* 

Shocking abuses were found by the investigation, in 
connection with night work in two small mills in North 
Carolina. While these cases are not cited as typical, they 
are given " to show the extremes to which unregulated labor 
of women and children can go in the absence of legal regula- 
tion or of efficient means of enforcement. "f 

In one of these mills it was common for night workers 
who had worked all Friday night to continue until 3:30 
o'clock on Saturday afternoon, "working approximately 
twenty and one-half out of twenty-one and one-half consecu- 
tive hours." The day workers were ''frequently requested 
to return to the mill immediately after supper and work until 
midnight, and frequently some one was sent to the homes of 
employes early in the evening or at midnight to request day 
workers to come and work half the night. Some employes 
usually declined to do overtime work. Others worked 
alternate nights as a regular custom." 

Among those who thus worked at night after and in 
addition to a twelve-hour day, was a family of five children, 
consisting of three boys, aged ten, fifteen and seventeen 
years, and two little girls of eleven and thirteen years. Their 
names were entered upon both the day roll and the night 
roll of the mill. 

"It was found," says the report, "that during a con- 
siderable part of the eight months that this family had been 
at this mill, these children had worked two or three half 
nights each week, in addition to day work. After working 
from 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. with 35 minutes for dinner, they had 
returned to the mill usually every other night immediately 
after supper, and worked until midnight, when they went 
home for four or five hours of sleep before beginning the 
next day's work; or, they had been aroused at midnight and 
sent to the mill for the second half of the night, where they 

* Senate Document, No. 645, Op. cit. Vol. I, p. 289. 
t Ibid. Vol. 1, pp. 290-291. 

274 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

remained until six o'clock the following afternoon, except 
when eating breakfast and dinner. In either case, they were 
on duty for a working day of seventeen hours, with no rest 
period save for meals. Those who worked the second half 
of the night went home for a hurried breakfast just before 
6 a. m. 

"The father of the family was apparently an active, 
hardworking man. He expressed the opinion that night 
work in addition to day work was rather hard on the children, 
but said that he was trying to get money to buy a home. 
. . . No member of this family could read or write." 

The government agents found the homes of many night 
workers as dismal and neglected as similar homes were found 
by investigators abroad. In several cases when both parents 
worked on night shifts, the children came to the mill to sleep 
on boxes and rolls of cotton, — pitiable drifts and strays de- 
prived of anchorage.* Or when the mother of a family 
worked on a night shift and also attended to her home duties, 
including the weekly washing and ironing, she had to spend 
"one day at least . . . from 18 to 24 hours without 
sleeping.'' 

Of the moral degeneration due to night work, the govern- 
ment report on the glass industry gives lurid instances.! 
Women's work in glass making is confined for the most part 
to the finishing department and to the lehr-room, where glass- 
ware is removed from the lehr or annealing-oven in which it 
has been slowly cooled after firing. In four factories, how- 
ever, negro women are employed as substitutes for boys in 
the furnace rooms. Here, during the night shift and at dawn 
when work stops, are found at their worst the coarseness and 
immoralities resulting from the close association at night, of 
men and women hardened by the most exhausting and hot- 
test labor. 

If the character of these poor negro women in the glass- 
houses be held responsible for the excesses of the night shift 
and the perils of their lonely return home, what shall be said 

* Ibid. Vol. I, pp. 289 and 293. 

t Ibid. Vol. III. The Glass Industry, p. 177 ff. 

275 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

of the similar perils and alarms of refined women employed 
in night restaurants, whose' return home at midnight or 
thereabouts is compulsory? Can there be any doubt that 
such a necessity is unworthy of any community calling itself 
civilized?* 

Such, then, are some of the documentary evidences, 
though insufficient and merely suggestive of the existing 
night work of women. If we turn now to our fragmentary 
data as to the economic value of night work, it seems also 
to corroborate European experience. Just as the silk mill 
owners of the Vosges and Rhone found weaving by artificial 
light unsatisfactory, so it is beginning to be found in the silk 
centers of America. f Just as night work was abandoned 
by many European employers because of its lesser pro- 
ductivity and the decreased efficiency of their workers, so, 
says a recent publication of the South Carolina Department 
of Agriculture, Commerce and Immigration, night work 
"seems to be generally regarded as a losing proposition.''! 

Cotton mill owners in North Carolina who had volun- 
tarily discontinued night work and were therefore disin- 
terested witnesses, were unanimous in declaring to the govern- 
ment investigators that 

"it did not pay. They asserted that, as a rule, they 
could induce only an inferior class of employes to work on the 
night shifts, with a constant lowering in the quality of prod- 
uct, while at the same time a higher rate of wages than usual 
was required to secure even this class of help; that continu- 
ous operation resulted in more than ordinary 'wear and 
tear' on machinery, and that there was a disposition to neg- 
lect the care of machinery when used jointly by two shifts. 
The manager of a mill in Georgia, which had carried on night 
work for a year and abandoned it, expressed the feeling tersely 
by saying, ' It was hard on the people and hard on the ma- 
chinery.'" § 

* Ibid. Vol. V. Wage-Earning Women in Stores and Factories, p. 75. 

t Ibid. Vol. IV. The Silk Industry, p. 143. 

t The Cotton Mills of South Carolina. Published by the South 
Carolina Department of Agriculture, Commerce, and Immigration. 1907. 

§ Senate Document No. 645. Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 285. 
276 



PROHIBITION OF NIGHT WORK 

"The indications," says the federal report, "are strong 
enough to warrant the conclusion that overtime runs to 
dangerous limits in both mercantile and manufacturing es- 
tablishrnents, in the absence of restrictive laws not only 
setting definitely a limit to the hours of labor per day and 
per week, but fixing the closing hours.""^ 

The legal closing hour which has been found the only 
practicable device to check unscrupulous night work, is the 
most immediate need in our legislation for working women. 
It must be made an integral part of all laws reducing the 
length of the workday if they are to be enforceable and if they 
are to protect the workers in fact as well as in theory. 

The special interests are strong enough today to obscure 
the issues and secure for themselves special license to invert 
nature's order of life for thousands of working women. 
Nature's revenges for the infraction of her inviolable law will 
teach another generation better wisdom, unless reason can 
in our day prevail over indifference and greed, and restore 
to wage-earning girls and women the night for sleep. 

* Senate Document No. 645. Op. cit., Vol. V. Wage-Earning Wo- 
men in Stores and Factories, p. 215. Italics added. 



277 



M 



XI 

CONCLUSION 

ANY persons who have followed our argument to 
this point may be inclined to resent the predominat- 
ing role assigned to overwork and fatigue. They may 
contend that this stress on the length of working hours is 
wholly irrational ; that overstrain is altogether too limited a 
cause to assign for the breakdown of health and efficiency. 
"The really fundamental basis of health/' these critics will 
say, "is contingent upon the total standard of living. The 
causes of breakdown cannot be isolated, but lie in the total 
disabilities of working people. Their dark and unsanitary 
homes, their overcrowding and lack of privacies, their bad 
food and unpalatable cooking, — all these things are more 
important for health than the mere number of hours spent at 
work. And on the industrial side, probably wages and in- 
come have a much more direct relation to health than a few 
hours more or less of work. In curtailing work, therefore,'' 
our critic continues, " you are further lessening productivity 
and income, and so are merely making the struggle for exist- 
ence harder." 

Some conscientious critics go even further than this and 
contend that leisure is mere temptation to go wrong, when 
people live in wretched, crowded homes, with only the street 
and the saloon to satisfy desire. A shortened workday, they 
say, gives the workers just so much more opportunity for 
dissipation. 

Now it is, in large degree, this point of view on the part 
of many persons which is responsible for much of the pre- 
valent indifference and ignorance concerning the active in- 
juries of overwork, in industry as it exists today. 

278 



CONCLUSION 

In a previous chapter we have dwelt upon the economic 
fallacy in this criticism, and have shown how output and 
wages tend to rise rather than fall with shortened working 
hours, so that income is in the long run increased, not cur- 
tailed. 

So far as regards temperance and the whole general tone 
of working communities, we need not rely on theories and 
speculations. We need only appeal to that body of historical 
fact to which we have so often turned for light. As a matter 
of fact, what has been the eflfect on working people of in- 
creased leisure? How have they, on the whole, spent the 
added hour or hours of freedom from work? 

The answer to this question is, indeed, one of the most 
encouraging chapters in industrial history: the response to 
opportunity, the rapidity with which working people have 
learned the uses of leisure. Where cynics prophesied mere 
drunken idleness and rowdyism, fairer observers found a kind 
of regeneration. There was no sudden millennium but where- 
ever sufficient time has elapsed since the establishment of a 
more humane workday, allowing a wider margin of leisure, 
the workers have made extraordinary advance in physique 
and morals.* The gradual emergence of the English mill 
operatives from the physical and moral degeneration into 
which they had sunk in the thirties of the last century, is not 
exceptional but typical. t It is a humble chronicle, but full 
of meaning to any reader who loves the fullness of human 
nature. Gardening, sewing, the out-of-doors on summer 
evenings, evening schools in winter, time for the "endearing 
trivialities of home life," — these were some of the simple, 
yet enduring things at which mill workers learned to spend 
their leisure. 

Of the benefits accruing from the change, none have been 
greater than the increase in temperance. Nor is this sur- 
prising. No thoughtful observer can seriously ascribe to 

* See Part II of this volume, pp. 290-317. 

t British Sessional Papers, 1847-48, Vol. XXVI, p. 9; 1849, Vol. XXII, 
p. 7; 1850, Vol. XXIII, pp. 48-49; 1868-69, Vol. XIV, p. 83, etc. 

279 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

man's natural depravity, the domination of liquor with all 
its attendant miseries. The truth is that among industrial 
workers the desire for drink has often sprung from sheer 
physical exhaustion. To a wholly unappreciated extent the 
sway of alcohol has been due to the worker's craving for some 
stimulant or support for exhausted energies. 

Thus, for instance, in such places of work as the laun- 
dries, which make the heaviest demands on muscular and 
nervous strength, where hours are long and overtime lasts 
late into the night, drink is the resource of physical debility. 

Sir Thomas Oliver, the eminent English expert on in- 
dustrial diseases, dwells* upon this condition of affairs in 
England, and the same may be observed in our own country. 

"Imagine the amazement of the master of a mill or 
weaving factory if his employes were to stop in a body for a 
quarter of an hour twice a day between meals to drink beer! 
Yet in many laundries the beer is kept on the premises for 
the purpose. ... A woman who is expected on Thurs- 
days or Fridays to be in the laundry from 8 or 8:30 in the 
morning till 9 or 10 or 11 at night, may claim with some show 
of reason that only by some kind of spur can she keep her 
overtired body from flagging.'' 

On the other hand, by releasing the workers before the 
very exhaustion of fatigue overtakes them and inclines them 
to the strong stimulant of drink, the shorter workday has 
been a powerful influence toward greater sobriety and self- 
control. 

No thinking person can deny that in the last resort health 
is determined by the total standard of living; that — besides 
long hours — poverty and low wages, unsanitary tenements 
and bad food, dirt and overcrowding, are the tangled causes 
of lowered vitality and illness. Nor would we minimize the 
physical effects of mental distress and worry among work- 
ing people who are only a few months off from real destitu- 
tion, when a short loss of employment may mean starvation. 

* Oliver, Thomas: Dangerous Trades, p. 672. New York, E. P. 
Dutton and Co. London, J. Murray, 1902. 

280 



CONCLUSION 

We would freely giant all that our critics can possibly say of 
these evils. They cannot be too strongly stated. Yet, so far 
as the overworked are concerned, all these causes of dis- 
tress might be removed — wages, food, housing, and sanitation, 
all be raised to a higher level — and yet the essential cause of 
breakdown would be untouched so long as the "few extra 
hours of work" remain, as our supposed critics would call 
them. The shorter workday and relief from overstrain are 
not in themselves the cure for the ills we have considered; 
but they are the sine qua non without which no other cure 
is possible or conceivable. Just because a fatigued person is 
a poisoned person, poisoned by the accumulation of his own 
waste products, nothing can fundamentally cure the ex- 
hausted worker which does not eliminate the cause of such 
accumulated poisoning. As we have seen, after exhaustion 
has set in nothing but rest and repose permits the organism 
to expel its poisons from day to day. 

In Professor Lee's impressive words: 

"Mankind at present can administer no food or drug 
that can push the wearied cells up the metabolic grade either 
simultaneously with their descent or quickly after the de- 
scent has ceased. Only the assimilation and detoxication 
that normally come with rest, and best, rest with sleep, are 
capable of adequate restoration of working power.''* 

It would be no more unreasonable to expect to cure a 
lead or arsenic-poisoned worker by higher wages, good food, 
and a clean house while he was continuing daily to absorb the 
arsenic or lead which was poisoning him, than to expect 
better food and housing to cure any worker who is habitually 
accumulating within himself the chemical poisons of fatigue, 
generated at every breath. Nothing can cure him and restore 
the buoyant resistance from which alone health springs, 
which does not allow the actual time off from work, for repair 
and recuperation. 

It is true that the psychologists tell us, and with them 

*The Harvey Lectures, 1905-06, p. 179. Philadelphia, Lippincott 
Co., 1908. 

281 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

the nerve specialists, that to a certain degree the fatigue 
threshold may be made to shift; that we may discipline our- 
selves to endurance so as to tap new levels of energy, " masked 
until then by the fatigue obstacle usually obeyed/' 

The most famous of American psychologists, who was 
also one of the " best practical knowers of the human soul," 
has written upon this phenomenon of " second wind," in an 
essay of characteristic insight and felicity which has some- 
times been quoted as though in defense of any kind of over- 
exertion :* 

"We have to admit," says James, "the wider potential 
range and the habitually narrow actual use. We live sub- 
ject to arrest by degrees of fatigue which we have come only 
from habit to obey. Most of us may learn to push the barrier 
farther off, and to live in perfect comfort on much higher 
levels of power. . . . 

" Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus 
lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of 
various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes 
below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.'' 

Why not assume, then, it has been argued, that the 
workers who are subject to industrial overpressure learn to 
push their fatigue barriers farther oflf and sustain the inten- 
sity of their tasks in proportion to their new-found powers? 

But such an argument strangely distorts the doctrine 
of second wind, which is something far deeper and more 
"qualitative" than a stress upon mere bodily exertions 
and activities. 

"When I speak of 'energizing' and its rates and levels 
and sources, I mean therefore our inner as well as our outer 
work. ... To relax, to say to ourselves (with the 
'new thoughters') 'Peace! be still!' is sometimes a great 
achievement of inner work." 

Far from justifying even remotely the industrial strains 

* James, William: The Energies of Men. Memories and Studies, 
p. 227. New York, Longmans, Green and Co., 1911. 

282 



CONCLUSION 

and stresses such as we have been considering, James speci- 
fically limits his plea for deeper and more intensive living by 
the proviso ''so long as decent hygienic conditions are pre- 
served." 

But our quarrel with the conditions of industrial labor 
is precisely that they are not "decent hygienic conditions." 
They are not normal media for human living, and they never 
can be so long as they continue to infract the first mandates 
of hygiene, the laws of metabolic equilibrium. 

There is a practical consideration also for putting first 
among the forces which undermine health, the length of the 
workday. The cure for this injury lies at hand. Shortening 
the workday is something that legislation can effect for 
women and children today, for men doubtless in the future. 
But better conditions within the home — better sanitation, 
better nutrition and hygiene — can never be enforced by out- 
side authority and can come only by slow process of educa- 
tion as people gradually learn to recognize such needs. The 
community can demand and enforce the requirement that 
workers be dismissed from factory and store at a given time. 
It can never enforce the requirements of hygiene at home ex- 
cept when their neglect becomes a public danger, through 
infection and the like. Hence the establishment of a shorter 
day is an immediate and practicable as well as an indispen- 
sable step towards conserving health. 

But this practical consideration fades into insignificance 
beside the fact that the "few extra hours of work" which our 
casual critic so under-rates, can wholly undo the benefits of a 
higher standard of living, even were it assured by long hours. 
Consider, for instance, the vital matter of nutrition. It is 
well known that digestion is one of the first bodily functions 
to suffer in exhaustion. Exhaustion, as it drains our nervous 
energies, deranges the unconscious reflex activities of the 
nervous system which, as we have seen, regulate the uncon- 
scious actions of our organs — heart, stomach, intestines, and 
the rest. Their normal action is impaired or retarded. 

283 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

What, then, is the benefit of a more ample diet if the or- 
ganism is not in a fit condition to digest what is offered it? 
The habitually exhausted person scarcely profits from the 
increased food which larger wages afford, if after excessive 
work he literally cannot digest it. It has been too dearly 
bought. So, too, the nervous heart troubles and palpitations 
among working people of which Dr. Ltibenau and the others 
write, — what are they but derangements of the nervous 
mechanism which regulates our most vital organ? What 
good to the worker are the higher standards, — better food, 
clothing, and shelter — so long as over-fatigue continues to 
limit or destroy his capacity of enjoying them? 

Thus fatigue does mischief negatively as well as posi- 
tively: lowering vitality and breeding disease is its active and 
positive aspect. Shutting out the exhausted from their right- 
ful heritage, contracting, binding, inhibiting, is its negative. 
Other faculties suffer as well as the vital bodily functions. 
For as exhaustion nullifies the benefits of better food and 
shelter, so, too, it paralyzes the higher activities, all that feeds 
man's mental and spiritual needs. The higher standard of 
living includes besides food and drink and clothing, better 
education, saner amusements, nobler recreation. But as 
the over-fatigued digestion fails, so over-fatigued hearing is 
blunted, over-fatigued attention and appreciation flag. Offer 
what opportunities you will to the exhausted organism, they 
fall upon literally deafened ears.* Fatigue so closes the 
avenues of approach within, that education does not educate, 
amusement does not amuse, nor recreation recreate. Books 
and learning, pictures, music, play — all these enfranchise- 
ments of the spirit lose their power. "Our fires are damped, 
our drafts are checked.'' The wings of freedom are clipped, 
wings that soar above 

" the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world." 

* Archivio Italiano di Otologia, Rinologia e Laringolavia, July, 1907. 
No. 4. Delia Influenza della fatica sull'organo deirudito. Dr. Luigi 
Ragani and Dr. Vincenzo Frazola. 

284 



CONCLUSION 

To be so crippled is deplorable enough for any members 
of society. It is the more so for industrial workers because, 
with industry as it exists, their development as human beings 
is more and more dependent upon the use of leisure. It is the 
peculiar sin of monotonous and subdivided labor that it 
destroys what we inadequately call pleasure in work, — the 
ever-so-slight satisfaction of man's creative sense, his dimmest 
feelings qi mastery or self-expression in work, often more pain 
than joyy 

The stress upon spontaneity and joy in work in the fore- 
going extracts from foreign insurance studies cannot have 
failed to strike the reader. It is the language of Ruskin and 
Morris on the lips of German insurance physicians. They 
actually talk as though there were after all a palpable con- 
nection between machine routine and deterioration, between 
health and the love of work. And these are not merely 
aesthetic considerations by theorists or dreamers. These 
physicians are not dealing with the stuff that dreams are 
made of. They are not seeking to evolve new theories or 
schemes of industry. They are as yet merely individual 
scientific observers, struck by brute facts which cannot be 
escaped: the enormous increase of certain forms of disease 
and suffering among working people year by year. 

In time to come, means may again be found for the play 
of individuality in work, for some freedom of the human agent 
from the machine. Industrial training tends in this direc- 
tion by giving the young some perspective, and teaching the 
relation of circumscribed tasks to wholes of which they are 
parts. A medical examination of young persons before em- 
ployment which would start them towards work for which 
they are physically fit, and the restriction of all workers from 
tasks for which they are clearly unfit, will also help to em- 
phasize the human element in manufacture and commerce. 
The wiser scientific management of businesses also offers 
vistas of betterment. 

But in the main, and viewing the whole trend of in- 
dustry, we cannot conceal from ourselves that its prodigious 

285 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

processes are deadening to spontaneity, and that they are 
becoming more so. We can no more check subdivision and 
monotony than the pace of the machines. But we can seek 
to imbue the purely economic view of the workers, as units 
of production, by a broader physiological spirit. Our studies 
in fatigue have shown that human power is not a static thing, 
which can be screwed up to the sticking place and remain 
there. The workers' muscular powers may be raised to 
what seems like the nth degree, and yet they may fail, 
broken and unstrung, at an age when working capacity should 
still be at its height. 

It is a truism that trade life in America has been shorter 
than in foreign countries, where the pace is slower. The 
race is to the swift in a sense never dreamt of before, and in 
our industries the swift are necessarily the young, even the 
very young. 

The pace has indeed been kept so high in many great 
trades, partly because the steady flow of immigration keeps 
bearing to our shores at intervals of time, young laborers of 
new immigrant races, able to replace those workers who have 
broken under the strain. So long as immigration streams 
westward it may be expedient, from a narrow economic point 
of view, to press all workers to their physical limits, and to 
dismiss them so soon as efficiency shows signs of failing. 
What shall we say from the physiological or racial point of 
view? 

We must bear in mind throughout that the essence of 
this newer view is its insistence on conserving the energies of 
men. In this the physiologist voices a larger, intrinsic de- 
mand of Democracy itself. He cannot consider man's out- 
put separate from himself, nor this year's nor next year's 
efficiency apart from its effects on future health and energy. 
Ten years' continuance at a maximum pace is in itself no 
criterion at all for the physiologist. Even one whole genera- 
tion is too short to measure the ravages of anti-physiological 
living; and when overwork unfits man or woman for normal 
parenthood, it is in a deep sense, anti-physiological and anti- 

286 



CONCLUSION 

social. It touches not alone the welfare but the very fibre of 
human society, that congregate "whole/' which it should be 
our passionate concern to recognize, in the stirring words of 
the Supreme Court, as "no greater than the sum of all its 
parts," for "when the individual health, safety and welfare 
are sacrificed or neglected, the state must suffer." 

Granting the truth of the Industrial Commission's con- 
clusion ten years ago — that no program for reducing the 
intensity of exertion can succeed — there remains another 
horn of the dilemma, the reduction of the work day. 

The workers' time and vitality need not be all consumed 
in their tasks. In leisure other ranges of the spirit are un- 
folded: "another race hath been, and other palms are won." 
The limitation of working hours, therefore, which assures 
leisure, is not a merely negative program. It limits work, 
indeed, to make good the daily deficits, and to send back the 
worker physiologically prepared for another day. It frees 
the worker from toil before exhaustion deprives leisure of its 
potentialities. It thus fulfils a reasoned purpose. As the 
physiological function of rest is to repair fatigue, so the func- 
tion of the shorter day is to afford to working people physio- 
logical rest — with all that is implied further by way of leisure. 



287 



INDEX 



Abbe, E.: efficiency and length of 
workday, 155, 163; the opti- 
mum of production, 165; work- 
ing capacity and its adjust- 
ment to speed, 206; Zeiss Opti- 
cal Works study, 155-167 

Accidents, industrial, and their 
hours of incidence: activity 
rate, relation to, 78; American 
Journal of Sociology, 75; Bel- 
gian statistics, 74; cotton mills, 
76, 77; earliest statistics as to 
hours of incidence, 72; factors, 
78-79; fatigue, 71-72, 78-79; 
French factory statistics, 74; 
general manufacture, 76, 77; 
German statistics, 72-74; 
hours when most frequent, 73- 
76; Illinois accidents by hour of 
day, 75; Imbert, Prof., 74; In- 
diana, 76, 77; insurance sta- 
tistics, 72-74; Italian railroad 
machine shops, 75; metal 
workers, 76, 77; need of scien- 
tific examination, 79; speed fac- 
tor, 78-79; United States, 75, 
76, 77; Wisconsin Bureau of 
Labor, 75, 76 

Acidity of Fatigued Muscle, 25 

Act of God, 202, 

American Journal of Sociology: in- 
dustrial accidents, 75 

American Telephone and Tele- 
graph Company, 49 

Anabolism, 12, 21 

Animals: death from exhaustion, 
13; measurement of muscular 
fatigue, 14-18 

Anti-toxin of Fatigue, 26, 27 

Arsenal, Watertown, 201-202 

Art of Cutting Metals, 



19s 



Ashley, Lord (Shaftesbury), 6, 72; 
argument against long hours, 
128; leadership in legislation 
in 1844, 124, 129 

Atlantic Mills: Lawrence, Mass., 
131-132 

Attention: definition, 68-69; .ef- 
fect of noise, 69; fatigue of, 69; 
fatigue in school children, 117 

Auditing: overtime, 87 

Augmentation of Working Pow- 
er, 35-36, 38 

Australia: shorter hours, 167-168 

Austrian Sickness Insurance So- 
cieties: morbidity, 42 

Automatic Adaptation of worker 
to shorter hours, 163, 165 

Bakers' Ten-hour Law, 246-247 

Baltimore Canneries, 63 

Bargaining: collective 208-210 

Barth, C. G., 197 

Basket making: Delaware law, 187 

Beelitz Sanitarium, 102, 103, 104, 
105 

Belgium. See Engis Chemical 
Works 

Bell Telephone Company: To- 
ronto controversy, 7, 48-49, 108 

Belting: maintenance, 207-208 
Berlin: Beelitz sanitarium, 102; 
factory inspectors' examina- 
tion, 238; heart disease among 
working people, 105; labor con- 
ference, March, 1890, 261 

Berne International Convention 
on Night Work, 248, 259-265; 
United States' position, 269 

Bethlehem Steel Works, 195-200 



19 



289 



INDEX 



BiDDEFOKD, Maine: infant mortal- 
ity, 91, 92 

BiNSWANGER, 103 

Birds: exhaustion after flight, 31 

Birth Rate, 95-96 

Bituminous Coal Mining in 
United States: table of out- 
put, 170-172 

Blood: effect of diminished circu- 
lation, 31; medium for carry- 
ing nutritive materials, 12, 23; 
medium for carrying chemical 
wastes, 12, 15, 17, 24 

Bookbinding Trade : overtime, 84, 
85, 271 

Borderland of Illness, 108, iii 

Box Making. See Paper box mak- 
ing 

Boys: long hours still legal, 4; in 
rubber goods manufacturing, 
234 

Brandeis, L. D.: new defense of 
labor laws, 252; Oregon case, 
251-252; scientific manage- 
ment, 192, 194 

Breakdown: contributory causes, 
278, 281 ; data lacking in United 
States, loo-ioi 
Brewer, Justice, 255 
Bricklaying: efficiency under scien- 
tific management, 193 
Brickmaking, 145-146 
Bright, John, 124-125, 129 
British Admiralty, 142-143 
British Association for the Ad- 
vancement OF Science: legis- 
lation and regularity of work, 
184; opinion on regulation of 
hours, 128 
British Factory Inspectors : first 
appointment, 129; on over- 
time, 88-89; providing in- 
formation, 130, 229 
British Government and the 
Eight-hour Day, 141-142 

British Interdepartmental Com- 
mittee ON Physical Degen- 
eration, 113 

British War Office, 141-142 



Broggi, U.: fecundity of working 

women, 96 
BuRCKHARDT, A. E.: morbidity of 

women, 40-41 

Bureau of Arbitration. See New 
York State Department of Labor 



Caisson Work, 120 

California: canneries, 63, 186; 
unjustified overtime in canner- 
ies, 187 

Canneries: California, 63; Cali- 
fornia, lack of records, 186; Cal- 
ifornia overtime, 187; capping, 
61-63; constrained attitudes, 
61-62; Delaware law, 187; dis- 
organization of the labor force, 
185-186; feeding corn cutters, 
62; general description, 60; 
machinery, 60; Maryland, 63, 
185; New York state, 60-62; 
overtime, 185; season, 62-63; 
sorting, 60-61; special over- 
time privileges, 269; state 
legislation, 223 

Carbon Dioxide, 22, 23-24, 25, 265 

Carl Zeiss Foundation, 156, 157 

Carozzi, L. : night workers in Italy, 

266 
Carrier Pigeons: exhaustion in, 

31 

CaTABOLISM, 12, 21 

Cell: distinctive property, 11 

Change: of habits in purchasing, 
180-182; in fashions, 189; of 
work, value, 107 

Chemical Workers, 144-155 

Chemistry: of fatigue, 12, 13; of 
muscular contraction, 21-25 

Child Labor, 232; inspection of 
health, 235; vahdity of New 
York law, 250 

Children's Employment Commis- 
sion, 127 

Christmas Trade: auditing, 87; 
Consumers' League work, 183; 
exemptions in state laws, 223; 
hours unlimited in New York, 
4; overtime, 84, 87 



290 



INDEX 



Civil Service Examination for 

inspectors, 237 
Civil War Veterans as inspectors, 

237 
Class Legislation, 257-258 
Closing Hour: fixed, 211, 214, 216, 

217, 224-225, 226, 261, 277 
Cloth Folding: efficiency under 

scientific management, 193 
Coal Mining: machinery, 171- 

172; results of shorter hours, 

169-172 
Coal Shoveling: efficiency under 

scientific management, 142 
CoBDEN, 124, 128 

Colorado Manueacturers' As- 
sociation, 123 
Committee of One Hundred on 

National Health, 115 
Commons, J. R.: Organized labor 

and efficiency, 208-210 
Complexity of Industry. See 

Speed in manufacture 
Compositors: Pieraccini's study, 

134-136 
Concentration of Work, 59 
Consciousness of Fatigue, 38 
Conservation of Human Energies, 

286 
Constitution: United States, 243- 

244 
Constitutionality of Laws, 242 

Consumers: policy of persuasion, 

182-184 
Consumers' League, 181, 183, 184; 

court decisions, 250 
Contract: freedom of, 243-244 
Contraction: muscular, chemistry 

of, 21-25; study of, 14-20 

Cooley's Constitutional Limita- 
tions, 258 

Cotton Goods Manufacture: ef- 
ficiency under scientific man- 
agement, 193 

Cotton Mills: night work of 
women and children in North 
and South Carolina, 273-276; 
scientific management and 
women workers, 205; study of 

29 



Cotton Mills {Continued) 

children in, 232; weaving room 
study, 201, 204 

Court Decisions: as to constitu- 
tionality of state labor laws, 
etc., 231-232; Consumers' 
League and, 250; Holden vs. 
Hardy, 245-246; judicial cog- 
nizance of general knowledge, 
252, 253; Lochner case, 246- 
247; Oregon case, 251-252; 
Ritchie case, first, 243-244; 
Ritchie case, second, 253; sex 
distinctions, 253-256; Wil- 
liams case, 247-251 

Courts: labor laws and, 242-258 

Cranberries: Sunday picking, 188, 
189 

Curare: use in study of nervous 
fatigue, 30 

Curve of Effort, 2>3 

Curve of Fatigue, 20, 7^7,, 35, 7^^^ 
134-136 

Customers: adaptation to change, 
180-182 

Dancing: rhythmic element, 80 
Degeneration. See Race degen- 
eration 
Delaware: canning law, 187 
Denis, H.: right to rest, 39 
Department Stores: shifting of 
employes, 206; states allow- 
ing exemptions at Christmas 
time, 223; states limiting hours 
for women, 5 
Devine, Edward T.: minor ail- 
ments, importance, 116-117 
Dextrose, 21, 22 
Digestion, 283-284 
Discrimination in the laws, 257 
Disease : general predisposition 
among working people, 111-112 
Diseases: industrial, 11 2-1 15; 
Milan clinic for industrial, 113; 
minor ailments, 115-117; oc- 
cupational, 233-234; trade, 112, 
115; white lead industry, 238 
Domestic Duties: women's, 55, 
267 



INDEX 



Doubling up, 213, 214 

Draper Looms: number tended, 

56-58 
Dressmaking: overtime, 176-177 
Drive, 200, 206, 209 



Early Closing Bill, 250 

Economic Ruin: fear of, 1 21-12 2, 
124 

Efficiency, 156; Germany, 165-166; 
in administration of labor laws, 
228; maximum of individuals, 
165. See also Fatigue; Output; 
Scientific management; Shorter 
hours 
Efficiency Engineers, 196-208 
Effort: under fatigue, 33-34 

Eight-hour Day: 141, 143; Aus- 
tralia, 167-168; bituminous 
coal mining in United States, 
170-172; Engis chemical works, 
144-154; Germany, 164; women, 
169. See also Shorter hours 

Eight-hour Law: first Ritchie case, 
Illinois, 243-244; Montana, 
256; Pennsylvania, 256 

Elastic Law: Great Britain, 218- 
223; United States, 223-227 

Emergencies: overtime allowance 

for, 184-190 
Emerson, H.: belting, 207-208 

Employment: regularity of, 175- 
191 

Enforcement OF Labor Laws: an- 
nual report of labor depart- 
ments, 228-229; desiderata, 
211; elastic law, 218-227; 
Great Britain, 216-218; in- 
spectors' difficulties, 226; in- 
spectors' opinions on, 231; 
Massachusetts textile law, 212- 
216; non-textile acts, 218 

Engis Chemical Works : reorgani- 
zation and effect of reduced 
hours, 144-155 

England: early factory legisla- 
tion, 6; night work for women, 
260; ten hours movement, 123- 
131. See also Great Britain 



Epidemics: contribution of over- 
fatigue, III 

Equalizing Seasons in Trade, 
178-180 

Ergograph, 18-20, 33-34 

Eukles, 14 

Evening Work. See Overtime 

Exhaustion, 9, 23, in, 114, 115, 
281, 283-284; birds, 31 

Eyeletting Shoes, 66 

Eyes: strain on, 54, 61, 63, 109 



Factory Inspectors: annual re- 
ports, 228-232; character and 
fitness, 236-238; England's 
first, 129; inspection of health, 
233; New York state, 227; 
physicians as, 233; Prussian 
training, 238; past services, 
129-130 

Factory Legislation as to hours of 
work. See Legislation 

Fall River, Massachusetts: in- 
fant mortality, 91, 92 

Fashion: changes in, 189; changes 
work hardship to piece-workers, 
83-84 

Fatigue: accumulation of waste 
products, 11-14; accumulation 
in overtime, 87; anti- toxin of, 
26, 27; as a danger of occupa- 
tion, 118; consumption of 
energy-yielding substance, 20- 
25; curve of, 20; effect on di- 
gestion, 283-284; fundamental 
factors, 20, 21; individuality 
in, 19; in industry, need of new 
study, 1 1 7-1 20; International 
Congress of Hygiene, 113; Ital- 
ian study of, 113-115; meas- 
urement of muscular fatigue, 
14-20; nature of products, 25- 
27; nervous nature, 27-33; 
new study of, in industry, 112- 
115; normal and abnormal, 31; 
passive, 164; physiology of, 
11-38; poison of, 13, 28, 36, 
281; predisposition to disease 
in general, 111-112; present 
day relation to output, 133; 
rhythm of machinery an ele- 



292 



INDEX 



Fatigue {Continued) 

ment, 79-82; specific toxin of, 
26, 27. See also Nervous fa- 
tigue; Output 

Fish-curing in Great Britain, 220- 
221 

Fisher, Irving: overfatigue, 115 

Fitch, John A.: court decisions on 
hours of labor, 255; example of 
eight-hour day, 168 

Flax Scutch Mills, 222 

Florence, Italy: compositors, 134- 
136; Dr. Giglioli, 114; Pro- 
fessor Pieraccini, 133 

Folksongs: rhythm, 80 

Foster, Sir Michael: nature of 
cellular life, 12; poisons of fa- 
tigue, 13 

Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Constitution of the United 
States, 243-244 

Freedom: labor's, to contract, 243- 
244; restraint of, 242-243 

French Factory Inspectors: on 
overwork and military service, 
99 

Freund, Ernst: police power, 243 

Frog: fatigue in muscle contrac- 
tion, 14-18, 35 

Fromont, L. G.: reorganization of 
Engis works, 144-155 

Fruit-preserving Establishments 
in Great Britain, 220, 221 

Gantt, H. G.: efficiency under 
scientific management, 200, 201, 
205 

General Knowledge : judicial 
cognizance of, 252, 253 

German Emperor, 261 

German Industrial Code, 263-264 

German Workingmen: fitness for 
military service, 99 

Germany: economic efficiency, 165 

Gibson, M., 126 

Giglioli, G. Y.: pathology of la- 
bor, 114 

Glass Workers: moral degenera- 
tion, 275 



Glycogen: how supplied and con- 
sumed, 21-23 

Graham, J., 128 

Great Britain: elastic laws, 218- 
223; fish-curing, 220-221; flax 
scutch mills, 222; fruit-pre- 
serving, 220, 221; laundry 
legislation, 221-222; rigid law 
development, 216-218 

Grigg, W. C: injury of long hours, 

95-96 
Gun Carriages, 202 
GuTERGUTz Sanitarium, 102 



Habits: possibility of changing, 
180-182 

Half-holiday, 225 

Hansard's Parliamentary De- 
bates, 124, 125 

Hardy. See H olden v. Hardy 

Harrison, A. See Hutchins, B. L. 

Health: observation of, in indus- 
trial estabhshments, 233-236; 
minors, 234 

Heart Disease: Berlin working 
people, 105 

Helmholz, H. von: myograph and 
frog experiments, 17 

Henderson, C. R.: European in- 
dustrial insurance, loi 

Hipps' Chronometer, 69 

History of Factory Legislation: 
the standard, 1 23 

HoLDEN V. Hardy, 245-246 

Holland : night work for women in 

laundries, 268 
Hospitals: as sources for study of 

industrial fatigue, 118-119; 

value of cases and records, 120 
Hours of the Day when accidents 

occur. See Accidents 

Human Element in Work, 127, 137, 
140, 141 

Hume, 124, 127 

Hutchins, B. L.: legislators' igno- 
rance of industrial experience, 
123 



293 



NDEX 



Illinois: bituminous coal-mining, 
1 71-172; Manufacturers' As- 
sociation, 1 2 2-1 23 ; ten- hour law, 
180, 253 
State Department of Factory In- 
spection: accidents by hour of 
day, 75 
Supreme Court: eight-hour law 
for women, 243-244; second 
Ritchie case, 253; ten-hour law 
decision, 19 10, and its value, 4 

Imbert, Professor: accidents, 74 

Immigration, 286 

Incidence of Accidents. See Ac- 
cidents 

Indiana: accident statistics, 76, 77 

Individuality: in fatigue, 20, 137 

Industrial Accidents. See Acci- 
dents 

Industrial Commission, Wiscon- 
sin, 239-240 

Industrialism: English beginnings, 
124, 125 

Industrial Ruin: cry of, 1 21-12 2, 
124 

Infant Mortality: cotton mill 
towns, 91; factors, 91; Great 
Britain, textile and non-textile 
towns, 92-94; United States, 
91-92 

Inspectors. See Factory inspectors 

Insurance Societies. See Sick- 
ness insurance societies 

International Association for 
Labor Legislation, 261 

International Commission on 
Trade Diseases, 114 

International Conference on 
Labor, 261 

International Congress of Hy- 
giene, 113, 260 

Interstate Commerce Commis- 
sion, 192, 208 

Iron and Steel Industry: long 
hours of workers in the United 
States, 4 

Irregularity OF Employment: in- 
jurious effect, no, 175, 176, 191 

Italian Journal of Social Medi- 
cine, 114 



Italians : prominent place in study 
of fatigue, 113-115 



James, Wm.: effect of noise on re- 
action time, 69-70; second 
wind, 282 

January "White Sale," 178 

Jay, Raoul, 259 

Jena, Germany: Zeiss Optical 
Works, 155-167 

Jewelry Case and box making, 180 

Kearsley, England: death rate, 94 
Kennedy, J. L., 127 
Kentucky: commission on working 
women, 50 

Labor Bureaus: annual report, 
value, 228-232; lateness of re- 
ports, 229-230 

Labor Laws. See Enforcement of 
labor laws; Legislation 

Labor Legislation. See Legisla- 
tion 

Labor: organized, attitude toward 
scientific management, 208-210 

Lancashire, England: cotton spin- 
ners' position, 218; death rate, 
94; factory conditions early in 
the nineteenth century, 6; long 
hours and output, 127 

Last Hours of Work, 126 

Laundries: British legislation, 221- 
222; intemperance, 280; night 
work in Holland, 268; Oregon 
case, 251-252; overtime and 
irregularity, 181; overtime in 
New York City, 271-272 

Laundrymen's Associations, 122, 
123 

Lawrence, Massachusetts: Atlan- 
tic mills, reduced hours, 131- 
132; infant mortahty, 92 

Laws, Labor: constitutionality, 
242; courts and, 242-258; dis- 
crimination, 257-258; first 
Ritchie case, 243-244; freedom 
of contract theory, 243-244; 



294 



INDEX 



Laws, Labor {Continued) 

Holden v. Hardy, 245-246; 
Lochner case, 246-247; new de- 
fense by Brandeis, L. D., 251- 
252; Oregon case, 251-252; 
police power, 242-243; second 
Ritchie case, 253; sex distinc- 
tions, 253-256; validity, 256- 
258; Williams case, 247-251. 
See also Enforcement of labor 
laws; Legislation 

League. See Consumers^ League 

Lee, Frederic S.: fatigue, 17, 19, 
25,32, 281 

Legislation: aim, 6; a new basis, 
3, 9; benefits, 128, 130, 132- 
133; class, 257-258; closing 
hour, 211, 214, 216, 217, 224- 
225, 226, 270, 277; converts in 
England, 128-129; England, 
early, 6; inspector's record of 
effects, 130; Massachusetts, 131- 
132, 212-216; need, 182, 184; 
non-textile, 218; organizations 
and associations opposing, 122- 
1 23 ; part played by factory in- 
spectors, 129; physicians' testi- 
mony in England, 6; rigid law, 
development in Massachusetts, 
212-216, in Great Britain, 216- 
218; similarity of history, 121- 
123; source of opposition to, 
5-6, 121-122, 124; United 
States, inclusive of all manu- 
facture, 224; women's rights 
party's position, 254; Wright, 
C. D., 131. See also Enforce- 
ment of Labor Laws; Laws 

Legislatures: freedom of, 257-258 

Leipzig: sickness insurance society, 
112 

Leisure: effect on working people, 
278-280 

Liberty. See Freedom 

Lif ge. See Engis Chemical Works 

Lighting of Workrooms, 239 

Limbering-up, 36, 78, 136 

Limitation of Hours: physiolog- 
ical necessity, 9 

Liver: function, 22, 23 

Loading Cars : efficiency under sci- 
entific management, 193, 195-196 



Lochner Case, 246-247 

Long Hours: Griggs, W. C, 95-96; 
in continuous industries for 
men, 256; iron and steel work- 
ers, 4; physicians' and medical 
schools' neglect of, 117; profits 
and, 130 

Looms: number tended, 56-57 

Lowenfeld, 103 

Lubbock, Sir John, 250 

Lubenau, Dr., 104-105, 284 

Machinery: coal mining, 1 71-172; 
fatiguing effect, 68-69; inven- 
tions and improvements, 172- 
1 73 ; manufacture, efficiency un- 
der scientific management, 193; 
shoe making, 64 

Machine Shop Work: efficiency 
under scientific management, 
193 

Maggiora, a.: amount of rest after 
fatigue, 33-34, 88 

Mahaim, E.: results of eight-hour 
day in Belgium, 146 

Management. See Scientific man- 
agement 

Manchester, England: Salford ex- 
periment, 138-143 

Manchester School, 124-125 

Martineau, H., 97 

Maryland: canneries, 6^, 186 

Massachusetts: first official re- 
turns on occupational diseases, 
233; history of rigid law, 212- 
216; legislation and output, 
131-132; state inspector of 
health, 233 
Bureau of Statistics of Labor; 
shorter hours and output, 131 
General Hospital, 120 
Supreme Court: cranberry- 
picking, 188 

Mather and Platt: experiment in 
shortening hours, 138-143 

Medical Inspection. See Physi- 
cians 

Metabolism, 12 

Michigan ten-hour law for women, 
257-258 



295 



INDEX 



MiDVALE Steel Works, 196 

Milan: clinic for industrial dis- 
eases, 113 

Military Recruiting: testimony 
as to race degeneration, 97-98 

Mines and Smelters, 245 

Mining: eight-hour laws, 254; Mon- 
tana law, 256; Pennsylvania 
law, 256 

Minor Ailments : importance, 116- 
117 

Minors: employment in Massa- 
chusetts, 234; inspecting, 235; 
manufactures injurious to the 
health of, 234 

Monotony: canneries, 59-64; ef- 
fects, 106-107; industrial tend- 
ency, 285-286; light and easy 
work, 68; manufacturing 
hinges, 64; means of relief, 67; 
packing small wares, 66-67; 
paper boxes, 63-64; physiolog- 
ical basis, 67-68; shoe making, 
64-67 

Morality: danger of night work, 
267, 275-276 

Morbidity of Women: greater 
than men's, 39-42; statistics, 
40-42 

Mosso, A. : effect of noise on reac- 
tion time, 69; ergograph, 18; 
exhaustion of birds, 31; fatigue 
studies in man, 16, 18-20; fa- 
tigued dog experiment, 15; 
ponometer, ^^; recuperative 
effect of rest, 34; Sicihan sul- 
phur workers, 98 

Motor End-plate, 31 

Muscular Contraction: chemis- 
try of, 21-25 

Muscular Fatigue: nature, meas- 
urement, 14-21 

Myograph, 17 

National Conservation Commis- 
sion, 115 

Needle Trades. See Sewing 
Nerve Fibers: two groups, 29; un- 
fatiguable, 29, 30 



Nervous Diseases : contributing 
causes, 106-107; German sani- 
taria, statistics, 103-106; in- 
crease, 103- no; Liibenau, Dr., 
104-105; Roth, E., 105, 106- 
107; St. Louis garment work- 
ers, no; telephone strain, 108- 
iio; Treves, Z., 107-108, in 

Nervous Energy: effect of train- 
ing on, 37; form of electric ac- 
tivity, 27 

Nervous Fatigue : consciousness 
of, 38; destructiveness, 27, 32; 
double origin, 28; location, 29- 
$S', Maggiora, A., 28; Mosso, 
A., 28; nature of nerve im- 
pulse, 27; over-stimulation, 38; 
relation to muscular fatigue, 
27, 28; unsettled problems, 32 

Nervous System: description, 28- 
29 

Neurasthenia. See Nervous dis- 
eases; Nervous fatigue 

Newman, G. : infant death rate and 
women in industry in Great 
Britain, 92-94 

New York City: bindery overtime, 
85, 271; Christmas rush and 
Consumers' League, 183; over- 
time in laundries, 271-272; re- 
tail Dry Goods Merchants' As- 
sociation, 123; working girls, 
54-56 

New York Mercantile Inspector, 
226 

New York State: bakers' ten-hour 
law, 246-247; factory inspect- 
ors graded, 237; factory law, 
226-227; medical inspector of 
factories, 233 
Court of Appeals, 247, 248, 250, 

251, 254, 259, 269 
Department of Labor, 255; laun- 
dries, 271-272 

Night Work for Women: Berne 
convention, 259-265; binderies 
in New York City, 271; Caro- 
lina cotton mills, 273-276; 
Carozzi, L., 266; Delaware, 
270-271; Dutch factory in- 
spectors' account, 268; effi- 
ciency reduced, 268, 276; Eng- 
land, 260; exceptions provided 



296 



INDEX 



Night Work for Women: {Con- 
tinued) 
atBeme, 262; extent, 271; first 
court decision, 248; France, 
266; Georgia mill, 276; Ger- 
many, 266; glass making, 275; 
Holland, 268; inferiority of 
output, 267-268, 276; injuri- 
ous effects, 86, 265-269; Inter- 
national Association for Labor 
Legislation, 261; International 
Conference on Labor, 261; In- 
ternational Congress of Hj^giene 
etc., 260; Italy, 266; laundries 
in New York City, 271-272; 
laws in United States, 1907, 
248, 259; moral injury, 86, 267, 
275-276; prohibition a benefit, 
259-269; public indifference, 
269-271; Schuler, F., 260; 
silk weaving, 276; Switzerland, 
260; telephone service, 272- 
273; United States, 269-277; 
Wisconsin legislation, 269-270 

Noise: canning, 62; effect on re- 
action time, 69; getting used 
to, 71; machines, effect of, 68- 
69; Mosso, A., 69; sewing ma- 
chines, 54 

Non-textile Legislation, 218 

Normal Day, 183, 217, 222 

North Carolina: cotton mills, 
night work, 273-276 

NoRTHRUP Looms, 57 



Observation of Health in indus- 
trial establishments, 233-236 

Occupational Diseases. See Dis- 
eases, industrial 

Oliver, Sir T.: beer in laundries, 
280; industrial poisoning, Scot- 
land, 143 

Optimum, 198, 206, 282 

Orders: customers' adaptation in 
giving, 180-182; refusing, 190 

Oregon Ten-hour Law, 123, 231, 
251-252 

Organized Labor. See Lalor 



Output: Ashley, Lord, 128; Brit- 
ish Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, 128; British 
government, 141-143; cash re- 
lation to fatigue, 137-138, 143; 
coal mining in United States, 
170-172; effect of regulation of 
hours on wages, 173-174; Eng- 
land, 123-131; Engis Chemical 
Works, Belgium, 144-155; ex- 
amples of extraordinary in- 
crease, 193; increase with 
shorter hours, 139, 149, 159; 
inferiority of night work, 267- 
268, 276; laboratory study, 
value, 121; Massachusetts 
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 
131; Pieraccini, G., 133-137; 
profit by regulation, 130; rela- 
tion between long hours and 
spoiled work, 128; relation to 
fatigue, 123-133; Salford Iron 
Works, 138-143; United States' 
experience in regulation of 
hours, 131-133; Zeiss Optical 
Works, 155-167 

Overfatigue, 9; Fisher, I., 115; 
physicians' neglect to study, 
117; public and social menace, 
in; society's failure to appre- 
ciate, 117 

Overproduction, 190 

Overstimulation: deceptive na- 
ture of, 38 

Overtime: ailments after, 88; al- 
lowances and exemptions, 213- 
214, 219; basis for, 177-178; 
British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, 184; 
British factory inspectors, 88- 
89; British tobacco factories, 
88; canneries, 185-186; Chi- 
cago, 85-86; cranberry-picking, 
188-199; deterioration of prod- 
uct, 163; economic evils, 176- 
177; emergencies, 184-190; es- 
sential injury to health, 86-87; 
evil effect of allowing, 185, 191; 
extent, 271; extreme forms, 84; 
Federal investigation, 85; fre- 
quency, 85; gradual restriction 
in Great Britain, 219-223; key 
to regulation of hours, 211; 
laundries, 180-182; legal clos- 



297 



INDEX 



Overtime (Continued) 

ing hour, 211; legal prohibi- 
tion, 184-191; Ukenesses to the 
long day, 176; minors in Great 
Britain, 223; necessity for, 188- 
189, 191; New York City, 85; 
night dangers, 86; paper-box 
making, 85-86; physiological 
evils, 176; power of persuasion 
182-184; regularity and, 175- 
191; Roth, E., 89; telephone 
service in, 49-51; variation in 
different estabhshments, 190 

Overtraining, 37 

Overwork: new medical study of, 
1 1 2-1 15; school children, 117; 
to check, 6 

Owen, Robert: argument against 
long hours, 128 

Oxygen: for combustion, 21; how 
supplied for muscular contrac- 
tion, 23-25 



Pace-makers, 83 

Paper-box Making, 180; Chicago 

hours, 85-86 
Parliamentary Debates, 124, 125 
Passive Fatigue, 164 
Pathology of Work, 113-115, 120 
Peckham, Justice, 247 

Pennsylvania: labor oflScial, 231- 
232 

Perishable Goods, 187, 220-223 

Persuasion by Consumers, 182- 
184 

Pettenkofer, 24 

Physicians : as health inspectors in 
industrial establishments, 233; 
neglect of industrial overstrain, 
117; nervous diseases, testi- 
mony as to increase, 103-110; 
testimony, 6, 7, 48 

Piece-work: abuses, 82-83; as af- 
fected by shorter hours, 140; 
danger, 84; excessive strain, 
107; fashion changes, 83-84; 
hardships, 83; merit, 82; pace- 
makers, 83; St. Louis garment 
workers, no; sewing trades, 
82; shoe industry, 82; speed- 



Piece-work (Continued) 

ing up, 82; statistics before and 

after reduced hours in Zeiss 

works, 157-162 
Pieraccini, G. : output study and its 

value, 133-135 
Pig Iron Handling, 195-199 

Poison of Fatigue. See Fatigue; 
Toxin 

Police Power of the State, 242- 
243 

PONOMETER, ^^ 

PoNOMETRic Curve, :^$ 

Postponement of Rest, 88 

Preston, England: infant death 
rate, 94 

Prevention of Disease, 102-103, 
115, 118-119, 239 

Prinzing, F., 42 

Products of Fatigue: nature, 25- 
27 

Prohibition: of night work for 
women, 259-269; of overtime, 
184-191 

Prussian: factory inspectors' train- 
ing, 238 

Purchasers: adaptation to change, 
180-182 



Quail: exhaustion after long flight, 
31 



Race Degeneration, 113; Ascher, 
Dr., 99; England, 1830-1840, 
97; factory population, 97; 
France, 99; German working- 
men, 99; miUtary statistics, 
97-98; Mosso, A., 98; Schuler, 
F., 98; sub-normal children, 97; 
Switzerland, 98-99 

Ramazzini, B., 112 

Ramazzini, II, 114 

Ranke, J.: experiment with fa- 
tigued frog muscle, 14-15 

Reaction Time: individual differ- 
ences, 69 



298 



INDEX 



Regularity of Employment, 175- 
191; best incentive, 191; pro- 
moted by law, 182, 184; two 
examples, 179-180 

Regulation: basis of opposition to, 
1 21-12 2, 124; effect on wages, 
1 73~'^ 74 ; English conversions to 
the principle, 128-129; United 
States experience, 131-133 

Rest: balancing exertion, 12, 34, 
38, 197; daily need, 256; es- 
sential value, 88; weekly, 256 

Resting-time : telephone service, 
no 

Retail Dry Goods Merchants' 
Association of New York City, 
123 

Rhythm: an element in fatigue, 79- 
82; dance and song, 80; human, 
80; machinery, 81-82; physi- 
ology of, 81; value, 80-91 

Rigid Law: effect, 217; Great Brit- 
ain, 216-218; Massachusetts, 
212-216 

Ritchie Case: first, 244-245; sec- 
ond, 253 

Roebuck, Mr., 128-129 

Roth, E.: nervous diseases among 
working people, 105, 106-107; 
overtime, 89 

Royal Canadian Commission, 7, 

48-49 
Rubber Goods Manufacture, 234 



Sadler's Committee, 6 

Safety: problems, 239 

St. Louis Jewish Dispensary: 
neurasthenia among garment 
workers, no 

Salford Iron Works: economic 
results of shorter hours, 138- 
143 

Sanitaria for Working People in 
Germany, 102 

School Children: overwork and 
fatigue, 117 

Schuler, F.: morbidity of women, 
40-41; night work law, 260 



Schwab, C. M., 200 

Schwab, Dr. S. I., no 

Scientific Management: Abbe, E., 
206; benefits, 201-203; Beth- 
lehem Steel Works, 195-200; 
charges against, 200; collective 
bargaining, 208-210; dangers, 
200, 203-208; definition, 192; 
difference from ordinary, 194; 
effecton workers, 204-208; Em- 
erson, H., 207-208; examples 
of increased efficiency, 193; 
Gantt, H. G., 200, 201, 205; 
loading a freight car, 195-196; 
need of study, 206; organized 
labor, 208-210; physical sur- 
roundings of workers, 203; 
speed, 199-200; stimuh, 194, 
198-199; Taylor, F. W., 195; 
tiring effects of heavy labor, 
196; training a worker, 197; 
Watertown (Mass.) Arsenal, 
201-202; weaving, 201; wo- 
men workers, 205; workers, ef- 
fect on, 204-208; working 
capacity, 204; Wyatt, E., 205 

Seasonal Trades: canning, 62; 
shoes, 179-180 

Seasons: efforts to equalize, 178- 
180 

Second Wind, 282 

Senior, N. W. : theory of last hours 
of work, 126, 127 

Sewing Industries: evils, 54-55; 

irregularity, 54-55; legal hours, 

New York, 54; long hours, 55; 

pay, 54-55; speed and strain, 

53-56 
Sewing Machines : increasing 

speed and strain, lo-ii, 54 

Sex Distinctions, 253-256 

Sex Function of Women, 40 

Shaftesbury, Lord. See Ashley y 
Lord 

Shoe Manufacturing: equalizing 
seasons, 179-180; eyeletting, 
66; machinery, 64; monotony, 
64; piece-work, 82; subdivision 
of labor, 64; United States In- 
dustrial Commission, 64; up- 
per trimming machine, 65 



299 



INDEX 



Shorter Hours: Australia, 167- 
168; automatic adaptation, 163, 
165; Belgium, 144-154; Denis, 
H., 39; diagram of health im- 
provement, 1 51-155; economic 
benefits, 122; effect on piece- 
work, 140; Engis Chemical 
Works, 144-155; England, 138- 
143; Germany, 155-167; in- 
crease of output, 139, 151, 158- 
159; market value, 143; men's, 
168-169; purpose, 287; Salford 
experiment, 138-143; scientific 
basis, 38-39; slow movement 
toward, 168; temperance, 279- 
280; United States, 167-174; 
United States coal mining, 170- 
172; United States Industrial 
Commission, 169; United States 
lack of data, 167; uses of lei- 
sure, 279; various industries, 
167, 169; women's, 168-169 

Sicilian Sulphur Workers, 98 

Sickness Insurance Societies : an 
American study of, 106; com- 
monest diseases, 103; duration 
of illness, 41-42; German sys- 
tem and its opportunities for 
study of workingmen, 101-102; 
Leipzig, 112; morbidity statis- 
tics, 41-42; preventive treat- 
ment, 102; trade diseases, 112 

Sleep: loss of, 265-267 

South Carolina: cotton mills, 
night work, 273-276 

Speed in Manufacture : American, 
286,287; gain of, 199-200; how 
gained, 59; increase, lo-ii; 
sewing, 53-56; telephone service, 
43-53; textile industry, 56-58 

Speeding-up, 193, 199; sewing 
trades, etc., S2 

Spoiled Work, 176; in twelve-hour 
day and afterward, 127-128 

Standing: injury to young women, 
95 

State's Need of Preserving 
Health, 286-287 

Steel Industry. See Iron and 
steel industry 

Stitching Trades. See Sewing 

Stop-watch, 138, 192, 196, 200, 208 



Strain, 34; new industrial, 43-89; 
scientific management, 204-208; 
three ways of reacting, 91; 
United States lack of data, 100- 

lOI 

Subdivision of Labor: shoemak- 
ing, 64, 65, 66 

Sulphur Workers, 98 

Sulphuric Acid, 144 

Sunday: cranberry picking, 188- 
189; telephone service, 51 

Sunday Laws: courts and, 256 

Sunshine: lack of, 265-266 

surmenage, i15, i45 

Switzerland : 

Factory workers: morbidity of 
women, 40; unfitness for mili- 
tary service, 98-99 
Federal Council, 262, 263 
Mutual insurance societies: mor- 
bidity, 41-42 

Taylor, F. W.: scientific manage- 
ment, 195-200 

Telegraphers: interstate railroad, 
254, 256 

Telephone Service : American 
Telephone and Telegraph Com- 
pany, 49; Bell Company of 
Canada, 48-49; breaking point, 
52; cities of excess calls, table, 
53; excess loading, 52; ex- 
change, 45-47; hardships, 49- 
52; hours, Toronto, 48-49; 
hours. United States, 49-51; 
Kentucky, 50; length of ser- 
vice, 273; nervous exhaustion, 
108-110; New York, 49, 51; 
night work, 272-273; operat- 
ing, 45-48; overtime, 49-51; 
physical effects, 48; resting 
periods, 51-52; Sunday work, 
51; switchboard, 45-46; To- 
ronto, Canada, 48-49; United 
States, 49-51; United States 
Bureau of Labor, 49 

Temperance: effect of leisure, 279- 
280; growth with shorter hours 
of work, 154 



300 



INDEX 



Ten-hours Movement in England, 
123-131; effect in Europe, 166; 
English opposition, 124, 125 

Textile Industry: Draper looms, 
56-58; Great Britain, infant 
death rate, 92-94; looms tend- 
ed, 56-57; Northrup looms, 57; 
speed and complexity, 56-58 

Textile Law: Great Britain, 216- 
218; Massachusetts, 212-216 

Tiring Effects of Heavy Labor, 
196-199 

Tobacco Factories: ailments after 
overtime, 88 

Toronto, Canada: Asylum, 109; 
Bell Telephone controversy, 7, 
48-49; physicians on telephone 
strain, 108-110; telephone re- 
port, 108 

Toxin of Fatigue, 13, 26, 27, 281 

Trade Diseases: special, 112-115 

Trades: dangerousness, 120 

Trade Unions: basis in collective 
bargaining, 208-209; physical 
condition of members, 100 

Training: cost, 37; limits, 37; na- 
ture, 35-39; nervous and mus- 
cular strength, 37; overtrain- 
ing, 37; physiological basis, 36; 
Treves, Z., 37; value, 36 

Treppe, 35, 134-136 

Treves, Z.: injury of excessive 
drain of energy, 35; overstrain 
among working people, 107-108, 
III 

Turin School, 19, S3 

Twelve-hour Day, 4, 126, 256 



Unconsciousness of Fatigue, 38 

Uniformity of Hours: need, 184; 
promoted by law, 182, 184 

Union Labor. See Labor 

United States: administration of 
labor laws, 228; elastic law, 
223-227; inclusiveness of legis- 
lation, 224; trend toward 
shorter hours, 167-174 



United States Bureau of Labor: 
inquiry as to eight-hour day in 
Salford Iron Works, 141; tele- 
phone hours of service, 49 

United States Industrial Com- 
mission: on advantages of re- 
duced hours, 169-170; shoemak- 
ing, 64 

United States Supreme Court: 
Holden v. Hardy, 245-246; 
Lochner case, 246-247; Ore- 
gon case, 231, 251-252 

Utah: eight-hour law for men in 
mines and smelters, 245 



Van Thienen, T. H.: night Dutch 

work, 268 
Vienna, 260 
Vitality: national, 115 
VoiT, 24 



Wage-earners: value of study of 
diseases, 120 

Wages: effect of reduced hours on, 
173-174; loss by delays and 
waiting, 203 

Washington, D. C: International 
Congress of Hygiene, etc., 26 

Waste: accumulation in the blood, 
11-14, 18 

Watertown, Mass.: Arsenal, 201- 
202 

Weaving: efficiency under scien- 
tific management, 201, 204 

Webb, S.: effect of rigid law, 218; 
factory legislation, 123; textile 
and non- textile laws, 222 

Weekly Rest, 256 

Weichardt, W.: toxin of fatigue, 
25-26 

White Lead Industry, 238 

Williams Case, 247-251 

Wisconsin: industrial commission, 
239-240; limiting women's 
working hours, 269-270; night 
work for women, 270 

Wisconsin Bureau of Labor: ac- 
cident statistics, 75, 76, 77 



301 



INDEX 



Women: freedom of contract, 244- 
245, 248-252; health and citi- 
zenship, 254-255; morbidity, 
39-42; night work, 224-225, 
259-277; physical differences, 
39-40; scientific management, 
205; state's duty to protect 
health, 254-255. See also Night 
work for women 

Women's Rights Party and fac- 
tory legislation, 254 

WooLRiCH Arsenal, 141, 156 
Worcester, Mass. : employes' 
health, 235 

Work: human element, 127; in- 
dividuality in, 285; pathology 
of, 113-115; rhythm, 79-82 



Working Capacity: rise and fall, 
33-39 

Working under Fatigue: effort, 
33-34 

Wright, CD.: effect of the ten- 
hour law in Massachusetts, 131 

WuNDT: shortening of reaction 
time, 69-71 

Wyatt, E.: scientific management 
and working women, 205 

Zacher, Dr.: German industrial 

insurance, 101-102 
Zehlendorp Sanitarium, 105, 107 
Zeiss Optical Works: experiences 

of shorter hours, 155-167 



302 



PART II 

THE WORLD'S EXPERIENCE UPON WHICH LEGISLA- 
TION LIMITING THE HOURS OF LABOR FOR 
WOMEN IS BASED 
Part II consists of the material contained in four 
briefs submitted by Louis D. Brandeis and Josephine 
Goldmark to the Supreme Court of the United States 
(1908), the Supreme Court of Illinois (1909), the Supreme 
Court of Ohio (1911), and again to the Supreme Court 
of Illinois (1912). These briefs were submitted in the 
following cases, in defense of the ten-hour laws oi Oregon 
and Illinois, of the fifty-four-hour law of Ohio, and of the 
amended ten-hour law of Illinois: 

Muller V. Oregon, 208 U. S., 412; Ritchie v. Way- 
man, et al., 244 111., 509; Anna Hawley, ex parte. In the 
Supreme Court of Ohio, December, 1911; People v. Elder- 
ing, In the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, Febru- 
ary term, 1912. 



THE WORLD'S EXPERIENCE UPON WHICH THE LEGIS- 
LATION LIMITING THE HOURS OF LABOR FOR 
WOMEN IS BASED 



L THE DANGERS OF LONG HOURS 

A. Causes 

(1) Physical Differences between Men and Women 

The dangers of long hours for women arise from their 
special physical organization taken in connection with the 
strain incident to factory and similar work. 

In structure and function women are differentiated from 
men. Besides anatomical and physiological differences, 
physicians are agreed that women are in general weaker 
than men in muscular strength and in nervous energy. 
Overwork, therefore, which strains endurance to the ut- 
most, is more disastrous to the health of women than of 
men, and entails upon them more lasting injury. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol, XV. 1831-2. Report from the Select great 
Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills Britain 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

Samuel Smith, Esq., member of College of Surgeons and practising 
•surgeon in Leeds: 

10385. Are not the females still less capable of sustaining this long 
labour than males would be of a similar age? — No doubt whatever of 
It; because in the female neither the bony nor the muscular system is so 
strongly developed as it is in the male; in fact, the whole body is more 
^ielicately formed. 

10386. Is the peculiar structure of the female form so well adapted 
I* I 



2 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

to long continued labour, and especially which is endured standing, as 
is that of a male? — No, it is not. (Page 503.) 

10453. You stated that females were not as competent to sustain 
the labour of the factories as males of the same age; is it not considered 
that females attain to full maturity and full strength much earlier than 
males? — They do. 

10454. And would they not be so able to do the labour proportioned 
to their strength as the males of the same age? — No, I think not; the 
female is altogether a more delicate being than the male. (Page 510.) 

Thomas Young, Esq., M.D., physician at Bolton: 

10600. Will you state whether the female can bear labour as well as 
the male? — I think females cannot endure labour as well as males. (Page 
522.) 

John Malyn, Esq.: 

10678. Do you conceive that the evils that result from the factory 
system are such as would fall with still greater severity upon the female 
sex, as compared with the male? — I think they would, from the greater 
degree of delicacy of the female frame, and from their having less resiliency 
than man when acted upon by disease. I have already in an early part 
of my evidence stated the probable effect of too early employment on 
the pelvis of that sex. (Page 532.) 

10698. You have already said that its effect would be more per- 
nicious to the females, and consequently that they need at least an equal 
protection, and that, coupled with the circumstances of the majority of 
those employed in mills and factories being females, strengthens you in 
your conclusion as to the necessity of a legislative measure on behalf of 
those individuals? — Yes, for three reasons: first, they are naturally of 
a weaker constitution than the male; secondly, injuries during growth 
might be of serious moment at the time of parturition; and, thirdly, their 
propensities are developed earlier than in the male, — which might be 
counteracted, if time or means were afforded for mental cultivation. 
(Page 533.) 

James Blundell, Esq., M.D., lecturer on physiology and midwifery in 
the school of Guy's Hospital: 

10874. . . . Will you state whether the female sex is as well fitted to 
sustain long exertion, especially in a standing position, as the male, either 
in respect of the peculiar structure of certain parts of the skeleton or of 
muscular power? — Decidedly females are not so well fitted to bear those 
exertions as the males; and the standing position long continued is, from 
the peculiarities of the womanly make, more especially injurious to them. 
(Page 544.) 



PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN 3 

Sir Anthony Carlisle, F.R.S., surgeon in the Westminster Hospital: great 

11067. A considerable majority of those employed in mills and ^^^"^^^^ 
factories are females; do you conceive that the female sex is as well fitted 
to endure labour of the description alluded to as males? — Oh, no, certainly 
not; they are by nature less muscular, and I would say there is less sen- 
sorial power about them, and less animal vigour. (Page 561.) 

Peter Mark Roget, Esq., M.D., F.R.S., practising physician in London, 
consulting physician to the Northern Dispensary, consulting physician 
to Queen Charlotte's Lying-in Hospital : 

11167. It is known that a considerable majority of persons employed 
are females; do you think the female constitution is as well adapted to 
labour of the description alluded to as that of the male? — I think it is 
not as well adapted, certainly. (Page 570.) 

Sir William Blizard, F.R.S., surgeon to the London Hospital and 
lecturer on surgery, anatomy, and physiology: 

11220. It is a known fact, and often referred to as a sort of an apology 
for this system, that it affords employment to females principally; would 
you conceive, arguing on physiological principles, that the female is as 
well calculated to endure long and active labour as the male? — Certainly 
not; and universal observation would confirm that opinion. (Page 574.) 

Sir George Leman Tuthill, F.R.S., physician to the Westminster 
Hospital and Bethlem Hospital: 

11334. ... Do you conceive that the constitution of the female is 
as well calculated to sustain long and fatiguing labour as the male? — 
I do not. (Page 582.) 

Joseph Henry Green, Esq., F.R.S., surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospital 
and professor of surgery at King's College: 

11380. ... Do you conceive that the female frame and constitution 
is as well adapted to long-continued and strenuous exertion as that of the 
male? — I do not. 

11381. So the protection becomes the more necessary, when we refer 
to the fact of females being the principal operatives in such works? — Yes. 
(Pages 587-588.) 

Charles Aston Key, Esq., surgeon at Guy's Hospital: 

11441. . . . Do you consider that the female sex is, generally speaking, 
as well calculated to endure labour and fatigue as the male sex? — Much 
less able to endure labour than the male sex. (Page 593.) 

James Guthrie, Esq., F.R.S., vice-president of Royal College of Sur- 
geons, surgeon to Westminster Hospital and to Westminster Eye Hospital : 

11488. . . . Will you state whether the female sex is as well fitted to 
sustain long exertion, especially in a standing position, as the male, either 



4 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT in respect of the peculiar structure of certain parts of the skeleton or of 

muscular power? — it is not. (Page 596.) 

Benjamin Travers, Esq., F.R.S,, senior surgeon to St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital in Southwark: 

11603. It is alleged that a great majority of the young persons em- 
ployed are of the female sex; do you think females as competent to sus- 
tain labour as males? — I should think not, in general. (Page 606.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XXVIII. 1844. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for Half-year ending 31st Dec. 1843. 

Twelve hours' daily work is more than enough for any one; but how- 
ever desirable it might be that excessive working should be prevented, 
there are great difficulties in the way of legislative interference with the 
labour of adult men. The case, however, is very different as respects 
women, for not only are they much less free agents, but they are physically 
incapable of bearing a continuance of work for the same length of time as 
men, and a deterioration of their health is attended with far more injurious 
consequences to society. (Page 4.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1892. Select Committee on Shop 
Hours Bill. 

Witness, Mr. Thomas Sutherst, barrister, and author of " Death and 
Disease behind the Counter": 

1358. You have taken the evidence of 173 male shop assistants? — Yes. 

1360. If all these men, with hardly an exception, complain of the 
conditions of shop life, must it not be harder upon the women than upon 
the men? — Very much harder. (Page 60.) 

Ibid. Report of Lancet Sanitary Commission on Sanitation in the Shop. 

Without entering upon the vexed question of women's rights, we 
may nevertheless urge it as an indisputable physiological fact that, when 
compelled to stand for long hours, women, especially young women, are 
exposed to greater injury and greater suffering than men. (Page 248.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report of Select Committee 
on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., University of Oxford, Fellow of the 
College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons; attached 
to the London Hospital and the Brompton Hospital: 



PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN 5 

5282. Are those symptoms (debility of the nervous system, indi- great 
gestion, constipation) more marked in women than in men? — I think they 
are much more marked in women. I should say one sees a great many 
more women of this class than men; but I have seen precisely the same 
symptoms in men, I should not say in the same proportion, because one 
has not been able to make anything like a statistical inquiry. There are 
other symptoms, but 1 mention those as being the most common. An- 
other symptom especially among women is anaemia, bloodlessness or 
pallor, that I have no doubt is connected with long hours indoors. (Page 
215.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI . 1901. Re-port from the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

IVitness, Sir W. MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons : 

2470. Would you draw a distinction between the evil resulting to 
women and the evil resulting to men? — You see men have undoubtedly a 
greater degree of physical capacity than women have. Men are capable 
of greater effort in various ways than women. If a like amount of physical 
toil and effort be imposed upon women, they suffer to a larger degree. 
(Page 120.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1904. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. Report on the Thirteenth International 
Congress of Hygiene and Demography. 

Dr. Treves cited the case of a machine capable of giving 33,000 blows 
per diem, at which the men employed utilize on an average 18,000 to 
20,000, while the women, less inured to fatigue and less capable of atten- 
tion, utilize but 13,000. (Page 298.) 



History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and Amy Harrison. 
London, King, 1903. 

Women are "not only much less free agents than men, but they are 
physically incapable of bearing a continuance of work for the same length 
of time as men, and a deterioration of their health is attended with far 
more mjurious consequences to society. (Page 84.) 



6 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



Man and Woman. A Study of Human Secondary Sexual Characters. 
Havelock Ellis. London, Scott, 1904. 

In strength as well as in rapidity and precision of movement women 
are inferior to men. This is not a conclusion that has ever been contested. 
It is in harmony with all the practical experience of life. It is perhaps also 
in harmony with the results of those investigators (Bibra, Pagliani, etc. 
Arch, per I'Antrop., Vol. VI, p. 173) who have found that, as in the blood 
of women, so also in their muscles, there is more water than in those of 
men. To a very great extent it is a certainty, a matter of difference in 
exercise and environment. It is probably, also, partly a matter of or- 
ganic constitution. (Page 167.) 

The motor superiority of men, and to some extent of males generally, 
is, it can scarcely be doubted, a deep-lying fact. It is related to what is 
most fundamental in men and in women, and to their whole psychic 
organization. (Page 169.) 

Toronto University Studies in Political Science. First Series, No. 3. The 
Conditions of Female Labour m Ontario. Jean Thomson Scott, B.A. 
Toronto, JVarwick, 1892. 

In the struggle for existence women must recognize that whatever 
they are or may become intellectually, physically they are not men; 
... A girl who had lost her health, and finally was obliged to give up her 
situation, on account of continuous application to work, which after some 
years' experience proved beyond her strength, said to me, "We do not 
know at the time and do not believe that we are over-exerting ourselves." 
Isolated cases of women having shown themselves able to stand a severe 
physical strain cannot refute the fact that a vast majority of women are 
of a weaker mould than men, and that overwork has in many cases been 
the cause of a life of semi-invalidism. It is nothing short of criminal to 
permit, let alone to exact, an undue exertion of physical strength from 
women; and it is the duty of the government to prevent it. That women 
are willing, nay, even anxious sometimes, to attempt hard physical labour, 
is no reason for their being permitted to do so. (Page 29.) 



Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstags. 103. Sit^ung. 18. April, 1891. 
[Proceedings of the German Reichstag. 103d Session, April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Bebel: 

Workers, both men and women, who realize the true relations of life 
and labor are everywhere united in endeavoring to shorten the hours of 



PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN 7 

labor as much as is possible. . . . Even those who refuse to listen to this Germany 
request from working men are inclined to take a different attitude. in re- 
gard to working women. (Pages 2418-2419.) 

AmtUche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XXII. 1897. [Official Information from the Reports 
of the {German) Factory Inspectors, 1897.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

The inspector from Baden writes: 

The present 11-hour day, requiring constant standing, in weaving and • 
spinning rooms, is far more destructive to the organism of women than it 
is to men. The undermining effects of the long hours mentioned upon 
health are clearly noticeable in the appearance of the middle-aged women. 
(Pages 241-242.) 

Hygiene of Nerves and Mind in Health and Disease. August Forel, M.D. 
Formerly Professor of Psychiatry in the University of Zurich. Trans, 
from the German by Austin Aikens, Ph.D. London, Murray, 1907. 

The nervous hygiene of women demands special consideration because 
certain periods of their life require extraordinary precautions in view of 
the special predisposition to nervous troubles caused by menstruation, 
pregnancy, confinement, and the climacteric. (Page 320.) 

It is of special importance to accentuate the injuriousness of certain 
kinds of fme hand-work which overstrain the attention and irritate the 
brain, especially long-continued sewing and similar sedentary occupations 
that strain the mind. The one-sided over-doing of such work makes 
many women nervous and psychopathic or exaggerates bad tendencies 
which are already present. (Page 321.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1875. united 

states 

Mr. D , the publisher of a well-known periodical, says: 

I have had hundreds of lady compositors in my employ, and they all 
exhibited, in a marked manner, both in the way they performed their 
work and in its results, the difference in physical ability between them- 
selves and men. They cannot endure the prolonged close attention and 
confinement which is a great part of type-setting. I have few girls with 
me more than two or three years at a time; they must have vacations, and 
they break down in health rapidly. I know no reason why a girl could 
not set as much type as a man, if she were as strong to endure the demand 
on mind and body. (Page 91.) 



8 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1884. Hygiene of 
Occupation, hy Dr. Roger S. Tracy, Sanitary Inspector of the Board 
of Health, New York. 

Since the dangers due to various occupations have been brought to 
public notice, it has become a grave question how far the employment of 
women and children in factories should be allowed. Women are certainly 
more delicately organized than men, less capable of sustained muscular 
exertion, and more susceptible to many of the poisons used in the arts and 
manufactures. As the physical condition of women has such an important 
bearing on the welfare of the race, and on the health of future generations, 
it becomes fairly a question of government control. (Page 199.) 



Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics, 1888. 

Let me quote from Dr. Ely Van der Warker (1875) : 

Woman is badly constructed for the purposes of standing eight or 
ten hours upon her feet. I do not intend to bring into evidence the pecu- 
liar position and nature of the organs contained in the pelvis, but to call 
attention to the peculiar construction of the knee and the shallowness of 
the pelvis, and the delicate nature of the foot as part of a sustaining 
column. The knee-joint of woman is a sexual characteristic. Viewed 
in front and extended, the joint in but a slight degree interrupts the gradual 
taper of the thigh into the leg. Viewed in a semi-flexed position, the joint 
forms a smooth ovate spheroid. The reason of this lies in the smallness 
of the patella in front, and the narrowness of the articular surfaces of the 
tibia and femur, and which in man form the lateral prominences, and thus 
is much more perfect as a sustaining column than that of a woman. The 
muscles which keep the body fixed upon the thighs in the erect position 
labor under the disadvantage of shortness of purchase, owing to the short 
distance, compared to that of man, between the crest of the ilium and the 
great trochanter of the femur, thus giving to man a much larger purchase 
in the leverage existing between the trunk and the extremities. Com- 
paratively the foot is less able to sustain weight than that of man, owing 
to its shortness and the more delicate formation of the tarsus and meta- 
tarsus. (Pages 142-143.) 



Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 1901-1902. 

They (women) are unable, by reason of their physical limitations, to 
endure the same hours of exhaustive labor as may be endured by adult 



PHYSICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN 9 

males. Certain kinds of work which may be performed by men without united 

STATES 

injury to their health would wreck the constitution and destroy the health 
of women, and render them incapable of bearing their share of the burdens 
of the family and the home. The State must be accorded the right to 
guard and protect women as a class against such a condition, and the law 
in question to that extent conserves the public health and welfare. (Page 
52.) 

Report of the New York Department of Labor. Report of the Commissioner 
of Labor, 1908. C. T. Graham-Rogers, M.D., Medical Inspector of 
Factories. 

The average healthy woman is very much inferior in physical strength 
and endurance to the average man. Her physical conformation is dif- 
ferent, and the physiological and social parts that she plays in life differ 
from those played by man, therefore we find her more susceptible to the 
effects of hard labor and prolonged or sedentary occupation, which sus- 
ceptibility is increased during the child-bearing period. (I. 73.) 

Reference Handbook of the Medical Sciences. Hygiene of Occupation. 
Vol. VL 1903. George M. Price, M.D., Medical Sanitary Inspec- 
tor, Health Department of the City of New York. 

In many industries , . . female labor is very largely employed; and 
the effect of work on them is very detrimental to health. The injurious 
influences of female labor are due to the following factors: (1) The com- 
parative physical weakness of the female organism; (2) The greater pre- 
disposition to harmful and poisonous elements in the trades; (3) The 
periodical semi-pathological state of health of women; (4) The effect of 
labor on the reproductive organs; and (5) The effects on the offspring. 
As the muscular organism of woman is less developed than that of man, it 
is evident that those industrial occupations which require intense, con- 
stant, and prolonged muscular efforts must become highly detrimental to 
their health. This is shown in the general debility, anaemia, chlorosis, 
and lack of tone in most women who are compelled to work in factories and ,, 

in shops for long periods. 

The increased susceptibility of women to industrial poisons and to 
diseases has been demonstrated by a great number of observers. The 
female organism, especially when young, offers very little resistance to 
the inroads of disease and to the various dangerous elements of certain 
trades. Hirt says, " It must be conceded that certain trades affect women 



lO FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

a great deal more injuriously than men"; and he mentions, among others, 
the effects of lead, mercury, phosphorus, and other poisons. Even where 
there are no special noxious elements, work may produce, as already men- 
tioned, harmful effects on the health of women; but when to the general 
effects of industrial occupation are added the dangers of dust, fumes, and 
gases, we find that the female organism succumbs very readily, as com- 
pared with that of the male. Schuler found the frequency of sickness in 
females under eighteen, as compared with that of men of the same age, as 
174 to 100. Miss Mary E. Abrams (Oliver: "Dangerous Trades") 
found that out of 138 lead-poisoning cases in Newcastle, where the number 
of men and women workers was about the same, there were ninety-four 
cases among the women and forty-one among the men. She also found 
that out of the twenty-three deaths from plumbism in the years 1889- 
1892, twenty-two were women and only one was a man. The women were 
all between seventeen and thirty years of age. These figures are sub- 
stantiated by Hirt, Arlidge, C. Paul, Tardieu, and others. The predis- 
position of women in industrial occupations to disease in general is greater 
than it is in men, as was proven by Hirt in his statistics of tuberculosis 
among workers. The effect of work on the physical development of 
women was found to be very detrimental, especially when they were very 
young. Arlidge says that in those who from their youth work in high 
temperatures, the bones and joints are imperfectly developed, and that 
they are liable to female deformities and to narrow pelves. Herkner found 
in his studies of Belgian female workers that girls who are engaged in 
mines suffered from deformed joints, from deformities of the spinal 
column, and from narrow pelves. 

It has been estimated that out of every one hundred days women are 
in a semi-pathological state of health for from fourteen to sixteen days. 
The natural congestion of the pelvic organs during menstruation is aug- 
mented and favored by work on sewing-machines and other industrial 
occupations necessitating the constant use of the lower part of the body. 
Work during these periods tends to induce chronic congestion of the uterus 
and appendages, and dysmenorrhoea and flexion of the uterus are well- 
known affections of working girls. (Page 321.) 

(2) The Greater Morbidity among Women 

(a) General Morbidity 

The need of protecting the health of working women by 
limiting their working hours is emphasized by statistics of 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN I I 

the relative morbidity of men and women. In all countries 
where such statistics have been kept by sickness insurance 
societies, the morbidity of women has been found to be 
higher than that of men. 

Sixth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Vienna, 1887. switzer- 
Part XI y, Vol. I. Fabrikhygiene und Gesetigehung. [Factory Hy- 
giene and Legislation.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory In- 
spector. Vienna, 1887. 

At time of menstruation, during pregnancy, and after childbirth, the 
woman is especially liable to infectious and other diseases. This has been 
proved by the statistics of morbidity in Switzerland in those industrial 
establishments where men and women are at work together in the same 
trade, the proportion of cases of illness being as follows: Women, 127; 
men, 100. The number of days lost compared thus: Women, 150; men, 
100. These proportions become more divergent when the workers are 
under 18 years of age. Thus, for such workers we find: proportion of 
cases of sickness; girls, 174; boys, 100. Taking the statistics of cotton 
mills only, we find the proportion of cases of sickness; for women, 156; 
for men, 100. These figures alone, to go no further, show the necessity 
of special protection for those who, without this legal protection, are liable 
to be frightfully exploited. (Page 29.) 

Untersuchungen iiber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fahrikhevblkerung der 
Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauer- 
Idnder, 1889. 

There are great varieties in the morbidity of the two sexes. In general 
men showed a greater frequency of sickness than women. In 1000 general 
cases there were among men 291 cases of illness; among women, 257. 
This result is partly induced by the large number of men in mechanical 
shops who fall ill. If, however, the figures are taken solely from workers 
in the same occupation the results are often reversed. So, for example, 
in cotton mills (spinning processes), where women show a morbidity of 
128 : 100 as compared to men, and in cotton factories (weaving processes) 
of 139 : 100. In the silk mills the proportion of illness among the women 
is even more extreme, while in machine embroidery it is nearer to a balance 
— Ill : 100. (Pages 33-34.) 




"^''^^^ > 



tf 



12 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

An das Schweii. Industriedepartement, Bern. Die Eidgenbssischen Fa- 
hrikinspedoren. [Report of the Swiss Factory Inspectors to the Swiss 
Department of Labor on the Revision of the Factory Laws.] Schaff- 
hausen, 1904. 

The 10-hour day is now almost the rule for men. . . . Those indus- 
tries where the 11- or 12-hour shift is retained are almost entirely those 
which employ chiefly, or in large proportions, women and children. In 
other words, those as yet unprotected classes of workers who are obliged 
to toil for the longest number of hours in a day are almost entirely women 
and children. And yet women should be better protected than men, not 
only because their physical strength is less, but because they are the 
bearers of the race, whose vigor is materially modified by the health of the 
mothers. The State has the deepest interest in maintaining vigorous and 
able defenders, and therefore its foremost duty is to protect women and 
children from being overburdened. This necessity is most glaring in the 
case of cotton mills, as the researches of Schuler and Burckhardt, which 
have never been contested, prove a morbidity of women in this industry 
notably greater than that of men in the same. (Pages 26-27.) 



Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstags, 103. Sit^ung. 18. April, 1891. 
[Proceedings of the German Reichstag, 103rd Session, April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Dr. Schaedler: 

At the Sixth International Congress of Hygiene in Vienna, 1887, Dr. 
Schuler, the expert factory inspector, pointed out the greater liability of 
women to disease produced by unfavorable factory conditions. He stated 
that the morbidity of women in factory work in Switzerland had been 
approximately 27 per cent higher than that of men in the same industries. 
(Page 2406.) 



Das Verhot der Nachtarheit. Bericht erstattet an den internationalen Kon- 
gress fiir geset^lichen Arheiierschuti in Paris, 1900. {Schmoller's 
Jahrhuch, 25^"^.) [Prohibition of Night Work. Report presented to 
the International Congress for Labor Legislation at Paris, 1900. 



{Schmoller s Yearbook, 25 
Vg, 1901. 



3-4 



.)] Dr. Max Hirsch, Germany. Leip- 



Adult women have also an inferior power of resistance to the evils of 
night work as well as to the other harmful tendencies of industry. . . . 
On this point the sick benefit funds give striking testimony. (Page 1265.) 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN 1 3 

Schriften der Gesellschaft fiir So^iale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publications of the GERMANY 
Social Reform Society, Nos. 7 and 8\ Die Herabset^ung der Arbeits- 
^eit fiir Frauen und die Erhohung des Schut^alters fiir jugendliche 
Arbeiter in Fabriken. [The Reduction of IVomens Working Hours 
and the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The daily toil in factory or shop, the harm that — aside from the evit- 
able mental and physical exertion — arises from harmful bodily postures, 
such as continuous sitting or standing, and from the dust or steam that 
fills workrooms, has been becoming more extensive with the lapse of 
years, and the longer the hours of work, the more serious are the bad re- 
sults of these conditions. The statistics of the Sickness Insurance So- 
cieties, both as to the total number of cases of illness and as to the rela- 
tively longer duration of attacks of illness among working women, show 
an astonishing amount of sickness under the present working hours. The 
reports of the factory inspectors for 1899 upon the employment of married 
women in factories show that they especially suffer an alarming extent of 
ill-health, and that this is, in many cases, directly traceable to beginnings 
long before marriage. (Pages 4-5.) 

In contrast to the usual "occupation diseases" (as lead colic, etc.) 
are the characteristic diseases of weakness among women wage-earners, 
viz., anaemia and chlorosis; as in the printing trades of Berlin, where 
among the 4734 women there were 296 such cases, but only 72 among all 
the 11,801 men insured in these trades. 

When the dangers to both sexes are alike, the figures of the sick fund are 
always higher for women, unless the totals are complicated by accidents. 

It is so in textiles, glove and shoe trades, in the post-office and cigar 
manufacture. The Local Insurance Society for Berlin in 1899 showed 
29.7 per cent ill, and 41.0 per cent women in cigar-making. According to 
Wirminghaus the percentage of illness in all Germany in 1888 in cigar- 
making was 0.20 for men and 0.25 for women, while the percentage for the 
whole country in spinning and weaving was 0.61 for men and 0.72 for 
women. (Page 93.) 

Die Neue Zeit, Zf", 1905. Ehret die Frauen. [Honor to Women.] Eman- 
uel WuRM. Stuttgart, 1905. 

In 1903 there were 1,000,000 and more women working beside the 
4,000,000 men in German mills and factories. . . . The factory laws 
have some protective regulations, but not nearly enough to equalize the 
woman's far inferior physical power of resistance with that of men. The 



14 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



indisputable proof of this lies in the far higher percentage of illness among 
the women operatives as shown by the sick funds. Many such funds, as, 
for instance, those of the textile industry, with its membership of 420,000 
women and 380,000 men in 1903, are, by this disproportionately high 
morbidity of women, in the most embarrassing financial situation. (Pages 
156-157.) 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans VIndustrie. Rapports siir son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Prof. Etienne 
Bauer. [Nightwork of fVomen in Industry. Reports on its im- 
portance and legal regulation. Preface by Prof. Etienne Bauer.] 
Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans VIndustrie en Autriche. [Night- 
work of IVomen in Industry in Austria.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, 
Fischer, 1903. 

According to the testimony of the Sickness Insurance Societies, wo- 
men, when subjected to the same work as men, have a larger percentage of 
illness, this predominance being attributed to the influences of industrial 
labor, since the loss of time incident to childbirth is classified separately. 
It is much to be regretted that there are no data available which might 
enable us to judge how women would stand as to health, compared with 
men, provided that they were only employed during periods when their 
working capacity was unimpaired. Such data would not simply have 
purely theoretical interest, but would enable us to determine with pre- 
cision the dangers to which women are exposed in the difi'erent industrial 
lines, and to elaborate protective measures for them upon an exact basis. 
(Page 100.) 



Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Paris, 1900. 
In one volume. Legislation et reglementation du travail au point de 
vue de Vhygiene. [Labor Legislation and Regulation from the Stand- 
point of Hygiene.] M. Edouard Vaillant. M.R.C.S., England. 
Paris, Masson et Cie., 1900. 

... All reduction of daily and weekly working hours must be regarded 
as important hygienic progress. 

If we study the statistics of morbidity and mortality in the difi"erent 
trades, and seek to isolate, as far as possible, the efi'ects of dangerous 
trades and of working hours, we shall see very plainly in the reports of 
factory inspectors, and especially in the insurance records of Germany and 
Austria, that the reduction of working hours has succeeded, in a few years' 
time, in bringing down the totals of morbidity and mortality even below 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN I 5 

the total of trades that are considered relatively more healthy, but where France 
the length of hours had not been decreased. (Pages 515 and 516.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1890. F^a^JS ? 

STATES 

Dr. Schuler, factory inspector of Switzerland, states in a recent report: 
". . . According to the experiments made in Switzerland, the morbidness 
of female factory operatives is 27 per cent higher than that of males; and 
the average number of days during which the former are incapacitated to 
work is one and a half times as great as in the case of male workers." 
(Page 81.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 75, March, 1908. In- 
dustrial Hygiene. Geo. M. Kober, M.D., LL.D. 

The statistics of the morbidity and mortality of various occupations, 
while far from satisfactory, and subject to more or less erroneous con- 
clusions, nevertheless indicate that persons habitually engaged in hard 
work are more frequently subject to disease, and present a higher mortality 
than persons more favorably situated; and this is especially true of fac- 
tory employees, because their work is generally more monotonous, fatigu- 
ing, performed under less favorable surroundings, and they are too often 
also badly nourished and badly housed. (Page 473.) 

{b) Duration of Illness greater among Women 

The morbidity of women, measured by the number of 
days lost through illness, is greater than that of men. That 
is, women suffer from illnesses of longer average duration 
than men do, — and consequently are more disastrously 
affected by exhaustion from overlong working hours. 

Untersuchungen iiber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fabrikbevolkerung swiTZER- 
der Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss land 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauer- 
Idnder, 1889. 

If, however, not only the frequency but the average duration of single 
cases of sickness is observed in the two sexes, it will be found that the 
duration of illness averages, among men, only 85 per cent of 'that among 
women. And this prolonged duration of illness is not only found in 
single branches of industry, but throughout all — probably from various 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



causes. For the woman not only belongs to the "weaker sex," but she is 
also the one who makes most effort to employ herself usefully in the house, 
even when she is not well enough to work in industry — contrary to the 
man whose work is entirely outside of the house. . . . More favorable 
figures for women are only found among youthful workers. (Page 34.) 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Its importance and legal regula- 
tion. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

From the hygienic point of view it is evident that the protection of 
wage-earning women can have only good effects, when we remember that 
the susceptibility of women with regard to disease germs is greater than 
that of men. According to the data of the statistics of diseases of the 
German Empire there have been for each case of sickness among the men 
16 days, and for each case among the women 18 days of assistance or 
treatment at the hospital during the years 1888-1899. In Switzerland, 
judging from the researches made by F. Schuler and A. E. Burkhardt 
(1889) on the health conditions of factory workers, the average duration of 
sickness has been 21 days for men and 25 days for women. (Page xxxvii.) 

Die Gegenseitigen Hilfsgesellschaften in der Schweii im Jahre 1903. [Mutual 
Aid Societies in Switzerland in 1903.] Berne, 1907. 

Of 100 men insured, an average of 26.76 received sick relief, but of 100 
women only 24.26. 

The men who received sick relief averaged 23.55 days of illness: the 
women averaged 32.46. 

The women, therefore, show a lower percentage of relief, but a longer 
average of sick time, and, as a result of both circumstances, the average 
morbidity of the women is higher than that of the men, — 7.87 as against 
6.30. (Page 42.) 



FRANCE Encyclopedie d' Hygiene et de Medecine Puhlique, T. 6. [Encyclopedia of 

Hygiene and Public Medicine, Vol. 6.] Edited by Dr. Jules Rochard. 
Le Travail des Enfants et des Femmes dans V Industrie. [Industrial 
Labor of Women and Children.] Dr. Alexander Layet. Paris, 
Delahaye, 1894. 

The few statistics that we possess on these lines show that the morbid- 
ity of women is greater than that of men in the same trades. 

The Mutual Aid Society of silk workers at Lyon (with 4117 members of 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN 1 7 

all ages and both sexes) in 1889 found that the days of sick time for the France 
men in its membership amounted to 1522, and for the women, during the 
same time, 3978. Between the ages of 20 and 40, the days lost by sick- 
ness averaged 3.56 apiece for men, and 7.28 for the women. (Page 721.) 
Italian Workman's Aid Societies with mixed membership showed the 
same results. Thus, while between 20 and 40 years each man in the mem- 
bership lost 5.4 days' average by sickness, the women's average was 8.1. 
(Page 722.) 

Handbuch der Hygiene, Bd. S^. [Handbook of Hygiene, Vol. 8^.] Edited GERMANY 
by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene iind Fabrik- 
gesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legislation.\ 
Dr. Emil Roth. Je^ia, Fischer, 1894. 

The investigations of Schuler and Burckhardt, embracing 18,000 mem- 
bers of Swiss insurance against sickness (about 25 per cent of the Swiss 
factory workers and fifteen industries), show that factory work, even in a 
short period, produces very unfavorable effects upon the development of 
the body of young men. It is even more conspicuous in the case of 
women. Thus, of 1000 men in the manufacture of embroidery, 302 were 
sick to 332 women. In bleaching and dyeing, 279 men, 316 women; also 
in cotton spinning and weaving, the morbidity of women was much greater 
than of men. 

Similarly, the number of working days lost through illness was more 
among women than among men, being 6.47 among women to 6.25 among men. 

With increasing years, both frequency and duration of illness increase. 
(Page 7.) 

A second form of physical inferiority of women is their lessened re- 
fractoriness to external injurious conditions. All statistics dealing with 
the relative morbidity of men and women employed in factories justify 
the deduction that the greater number of days lost from work by women 
indicate that disease makes greater inroads upon them, and that in general 
industrial labor is more injurious to women than to men. (Page 87.) 

Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten iind Bergbehorden fiir das Jahr 
1903. Bd. I, Preussen. [Annual Reports of the {German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1903. Vol. I, Prussia.] Berlin, Decker, 1904. 

The following figures are taken from the statistics of the local sickness 
insurance societies for men and women in tailoring and allied trades 
(chiefly dressmaking establishments of Berlin) and also, for the first timiC, 
for those employed in home industries (needle trades), for the year 1902. 

2* 



i8 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Corresponding figures for all the German Sickness Insurance Societies 
throughout the Empire, with over nine and a half million members, are 
given from the imperial statistical year-book for 1900 and 1901: 





Tailoring Trades 
35,627 Members 


General German Statistics 
9,500,000 Members 




1902 


1900 


1901 


Cases of illness per member 
Days of illness per member 
Average duration of an illness 


0.36 
9.21 
25.6 


0.39 
6.82 
17.4 


0.38 
6.91 
18.1 



The figures showing cases of illness to each member are seen to be lower 
in the tailoring trades, but those showing the average days of illness and 
the average duration of illness are both considerably higher. This dif- 
ference is largely due to the women members, who constitute ninety-two 
per cent of the workers. The figures relating to the men tailors approach 
more nearly to those of the General Imperial Statistics. (Page 71.) 



Handbuch der Mediiinischen Statistik. [Handbook of Medical Statistics. 
Dr. Friedrich Prinzing, Ulm. Jena, Fischer, 1906. 



The days of illness per person averaged 


, to every 100 person 


s, as follows: 










s 




Ital. 










I 


Mutual 


Working- 




Frankfort 


Austria 


z 


Leipzig, 


men's 


Age 








Si 


1856-80 


Society, 








O 




1866-75 




Men 


Women 


Men 


Women 


Men 


Men 


Women 


Men 


Under 15 


14.7 


18.4 


12.6 


14.5 


10.3 






17.9 


15-20 


16.4 


19.3 


13.7 


16.1 


12.5 


19.3 


21.6 


23.4 


20-30 


19.3 


24.6 


14.3 


18.0 


12.3 


19.9 


30.3 


24.9 


30-40 


22.7 


31.4 


15.9 


20.2 


13.9 


24.0 


33.4 


25.4 


40-50 


27.1 


31.6 


18.6 


21.6 


17.9 


30.7 


37.9 


28.2 


50-60 


32.9 


45.4 


21.4 


23.9 


19.4 


38.9 


44.4 


30.3 


60-over 


38.9 


58.1 


29.8 


31.3 


26.0 


44.1 


55.1 


36.8 


Average 


21.6 


24.4 


16.5 


18.8 


14.3 


27.4 


35.0 


27.3 



(Page 110.) 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN I9 

The appearance of anaemia and chlorosis among women is unusually Germany 
frequent, especially when the cases of those who continued at work are 
included. In Frankfort, about one-fifth of all the insured women members 
have medical treatment for these troubles. (Page 116.) 



Geschdfts-BericU der Ortskrankenkasse fur Leipzig und Umgegend, uber 
das Jahr 1907. {Official Report of the Local Sickness Society of Leipzig 
and Environs for 1907.] Leipiig, Bar und Hermann, 1907. 

Most of the published statistics speak only of "members" without 
distinguishing between men and women. How different the curve ac- 
tually is for men and women is shown in the following table: 



Age 


Days of Sickness for 


Years 


One hundred Men 


One hundred Women 


Under 15 


595.0 


533.5 


15-19 


617.4 


753.6 


20-24 


657.1 


955.0 


25-29 


707.5 


1.205.4 


30-34 


813.6 


1,395.1 


35-39 


940.9 


1,465.3 


40-44 


1,088.0 


1,453.3 


45-49 


1,243.4 


1,495.9 


50-54 


1,456.2 


1,489.8 


55-59 


1,704.7 


1,485.0 


60-64 


2,068.9 


1,631.7 


65-69 


2,760.3 


2,376.0 


70-74 


3,456.3 


2,530.5 


75 and over 


4,042.9 


2,512.1 



(Page 74.) 



The curve of women shows how injuriously the double task of being 
woman and wage-earner affects them. It is evident their number of 
days lost through sickness during the years of development and child- 
bearing capacity is greatly in excess of those lost by men. The younger 
women, those under 15, have a more favorable curve of morbidity than 
boys of the same age. From 15 to 54 years women are more subject to 
loss of time from illness than men. Only when the active period of sex 



20 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY life has passed does the woman's curve again show her superior resistance 
to morbidity as well as to mortality. (Page 75.) 

Statistik des Deutschen Reichs. Bd. 186. [Statistics of the German Em- 
pire. Vol. CLXXXVI.] Die Krankenversicherung im Jahre 1906. 
Bearheitet im Kaiserlichen Statistischen Amt. [Sickness Insurance for 
1906. Compiled in the Imperial Office of Statistics.] Berlin, 1908. 

According to Heym, among 100 cases of illness, the length of time lost 
by men as compared with women was as follows: 





Men 


Women 


14-25 weeks 

26 weeks and over 


Per cent 
3.5 
2.3 


Per cent 

5.7 
2.8 



Prinzing adds to this: "Sickness of short duration is almost twice as 
frequent among men as women: but with sickness of a longer duration 
(more than 3 weeks), the case is exactly reversed." (Page 12.) 



{c) Continuance at Work during Illness 

Women suffering from minor illnesses continue at work 
more commonly than men. That is, women have fewer 
illnesses involving complete loss of earning capacity, more 
illnesses during which they continue to remain at some 
form of work. Hence excessive hours of labor are doubly 
injurious to them, because often performed when health is 
already impaired. 



Handhuch der Mediiinischen Statistik. [Handbook of Medical Statistics.] 
Dr. Friedrich Prinzing, Ulm. Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

The records next below show only those cases of illness that entailed 
incapacity for work. The numbers, as before, show the percentage, ex- 
clusive of confinements. 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN 



21 



^ge 


General 
Relief Fund. 
Some Volun- 
tary 

Members 


Vienna 1896 
Trade Socie- 
ties' Funds 
(Genossen- 
schaftkasse) 


Mutual 

(Gegenseitig- 

keit). 

Leipzig. 

1856-80 


Italian 

Workman's 

Society 

1866-75 




Men 


Women 


Men 


IVomen 


Men 


IVomen 


Men 


Under 15 
15-20 
20-30 
30-40 
40-50 
50-60 
over 60 


43 A 
56.9 
51.6 

53.3 
55.4 
57.0 
68.0 


30.9 
46.9 
48.0 
46.8 
52.9 
49.9 
59.2 


38.2 
40.2 
29.4 
27.9 
35.3 
41.8 
56.2 


26.9 
36.5 
26.9 
26.3 

28.2 
30.6 
41.4 


29^5 
25.6 
24.5 
26 1 
28.1 
31.7 


20.3 
20.8 
19.6 
18.8 
18.4 
21.5 


28.0 
29.6 
25.0 
24.4 
24.8 
26.3 
31.2 



GERMANY 



The differences in frequency of illness in the above tables could only 
be explained by a thoroughgoing consideration of the details of the man- 
agement of the sick funds. . . . (Page 107.) 

The difference in morbidity between the two sexes is obvious. In 
general, women have fewer illnesses involving complete inability to work, 
than men. ... On the other hand, illness without loss of earning capacity 
is much more frequent among the women. (Page 108.) 

The total list of all the Berlin sickness insurance offices for 1898 show 
that to every hundred men insured, 39.46 had illness attended with loss 
of earning capacity, and of every hundred women, 37.64 had illness 
attended with loss of earning capacity. (Page 115.) 

Inquiries have all shown that the number of sick cases with loss of 
earning capacity do not in themselves alone give a correct idea of the 
morbidity of an occupation. (Page 125.) 

To estimate the morbidity of an occupation those cases of illness which 
do not necessitate loss of earning power must be considered. It is then 
found that many occupations which appear favorable when loss of earning 
power alone is considered, have actually a much worse standmg. So, 
for instance, Frankfort a. M. in the year 1896, has the following tables. 
Among women the cases of illness without loss of earning capacity 
predominate in every occupation. 



22 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 
Frankfort a. M. 



Men 



Factory workers and day 

laborers . 

Porters, Packers 

Traffic men and drivers. . . 

Waiters, Cooks 

Salespersons 

Printers-lithographers . . . 

Tailors 

Carpenters 

Painters, Varnishers 

Smiths (lock and other) . . 

All occupations 



Cases of Illness 



20-30 Years 



Able to 
earn 



40 
32 
44 
55 
43 
44 
40 
28 
49 



41 



Not 
able 



34 
24 
31 
21 
21 
29 
21 
33 
29 
36 



29 



SO-4.0 Years 



Able to 
earn 



34 
46 
28 
43 
41 
49 
52 
50 
33 
42 



38 



Not 
able 



41 
30 
30 

25 
20 
31 
28 
37 
35 
34 



35 



To Every 100 Members 

(Including Both Sick 

AND Well) 



4.0-50 Years 



Able to 
earn 



30 

51 
26 
50 

45 
41 

37 
27 
40 
43 



37 



Not 
able 



45 
31 
41 
39 
34 
37 
32 
30 
53 
55 



40 



50-60 Years 



Able to 
earn 



31 
52 
34 
42 
60 
44 
53 
43 
46 
41 



40 



Not 
able 



56 
33 
55 
68 
26 
31 
37 
54 
58 
48 



48 



(Page 126.) 





Cases of Illness 


To Every 100 Members 


Women 


20-30 Years 


30-40 Years 


4.0-50 Years 


50-60 Years 




Able to 
earn 


Not 
able 


Able to 
earn 


Not 
able 


Able to 
earn 


Not 
able 


Able to 
earn 


Not 
able 


Factory and day workers 

Servants 

Waitresses, Cooks 

Salesgirls . 


45 
43 
46 
63 

53 


31 
24 
21 
30 
31 


52 
43 
35 
64 
62 


40 
30 
18 
37 
40 


47 
30 
53 
33 
49 


31 
26 
34 
20 
40 


51 
42 
25 
47 
29 


40 
38 
41 
37 


Sewing women 


54 






All occupations 


51 


31 


51 


36 


42 


33 


41 


40 







(Page 127.) 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN 23 

{d) Mortality 

Statistics show that the mortaHty of working women is 
higher than that of working men, and also higher than that 
of other women not at work. 



Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. LV. London, 1892. Mor- FRANCE 
hidity and Mortality according to Occupation. Dr. Jacques Ber- 
TiLLON, Chief of the Municipal Statistical Department of Paris. [Trans, 
from the Journal de la Societe de Statistique de Paris, October-Novem- 
ber, 1892] 

[Statistics from the Lyons Silk Workers' Mutual Aid Society — {Societe de 
Secours mutuels des Ouvriers en Soie de Lyon), — the Statistical Office of 
Italy, and M. Henri Rauchberg's Study of Workmen's Sick Funds in 
Vienna — (Die Erkrankungsund Sterhlichkeits Verhdltnisse bei der allge- 
meinen Arbeiter, Kranken, und Invaliden Casse in Wien — Statistische 
Monatschrift, Vienna, 1886.). 

Women between 20 and 45 show a considerably greater morbidity than 
men of the same age; above 45 their rate approaches that of the men. 
At least it is so in the Lyons Silk- Workers' Society, in the Italian societies, 
and (as far as can be judged from a table in which there is no distinction of 
age) in the Vienna Arbeiter-Casse. At the same time it should be noted 
that among the Lyons silk-workers not only the morbidity but also the 
mortality of females is considerably above that of the males, whereas the 
opposite holds good with the population as a whole. It is thus at least 
permissible to enquire whether there be not some peculiarity in this em- 
ployment which is hurtful to the health of the women engaged in it. The 
Italian table, which includes a great number of occupations, also brings 
out a higher rate of morbidity for women than for men, and their mortality 
at each age (calculated, however, from too small a number of cases) is 
greater than that of the men. 

The tables of the Vienna Arbeiter-Casse point also to the fact that the 
morbidity of women (526 cases and 9,255 days of sickness per annum per 
1,000 women) is above that of men (427 cases and 8,366 days). (Pages 
564-565.) 

Note (6). The general mortality of the women (without distinction of age) is, 
on the other hand, less than that of men, while the mortality at each age is greater. 
To explain this apparent anomaly, it is sufficient to consider the first two columns 
in Table II: it will be seen that nearly half the women (42 per cent) are under 40 



24 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



years of age, whilst only a quarter (26 per cent) of the men are under 40. The 
female members being younger, it is not surprising that their general mortality is 
lower than that of the men, although their mortality at any particular age is greater. 

Table II. Comparative Morbidity of the Two Sexes 





Lyons Silk-Workers 


Italian 


Societies (1881-1885) 






(1872-1889) 




(Corrected Figures) 


Age of 






Morbidity 


Mortality 


Morbidity 


Mortality 


THE 


/Innual 












Members 














average 
number of 


Day 


sof 


Deaths per 


Days of 


Deaths per 




memher<: 


sickness per 


annum per 


sickness per 


annum per 








annum per 


1000 


annum per 


1000 








member 


members 


member 


members 


Years 


Mas. 


Fern. 


Mas. 


Fern. 


Mas. 


Fern. 


Mas. 


Fem. 


Mas. 


Fem. 


18 and 19 


96 


479 


1.76 


2.18 














20-24 


607 


3897 


3.06 


6.37 


13.0 


10.2 


5.0 


7.8 


6.3 




25-29 


1481 


6100 


3.40 


7.49 


5.4 


9.3 


5.4 


8.0 


5.9 


9.1 


30-34 


2507 


7377 


3.37 


7.64 


6.4 


9.2 


5.1 


8.9 


6.2 


10.7 


35-39 


3259 


8209 


4.32 


7.62 


6.4 


8.9 


6.0 


7.7 


7.8 


8.1 


40-44 


3442 


8161 


5.29 


7.64 


10.2 


6.2 


6.2 


9.3 


9.2 


10.0 


45-49 


3569 


7720 


5.89 


8.12 


11.8 


13.5 


6.8 


8.2 


11.6 


8.9 


50-54 


3214 


6429 


8.04 


9.58 


20.2 


14.3 


7.9 


9.3 


14.9 


14.1 


55-59 


2964 


5021 


8.38 


11.01 


19.5 


21.9 


9.2 


9.7 


22.2 


15.9 


60-64 


2623 


3795 


11.15 


14.52 


40.7 


41.9 


11.2 


10.0 


32.5 




65-69 


1956 


2617 


16.73 


18.57 


67.0 


55.0 


13.4 


8.2 


50.4 




70-74 


999 


1146 


19.76 


24.48 


88.0 


85.4 


14.7 




73.6 




Above 75 


378 


366 


26.90 


30.87 


148.0 


161.0 


13.4 








Average 


27093 


61317 


7.81 


9.39 


23.4 


17.6 


6.6 


8.5 


11.7 


10.7 



Handbuch der Mediiinischen Siatistik 
Dr. Friedrich Prinzing, Ulm. 



[Handbook of Medical Statistics.] 
fena, Fischer, 1906. 



As to the danger to life to women in industry the statistics are scanty: 
those of the Austrian sick insurance offices for 1891-95 are almost the 
only figures that offer considerable material as to women in industry on 
this point (mortality). According to them, the women engaged in in- 
dustrial labor not only have a far higher mortality than working men, but 
also their mortality between the ages of 15-50 years is higher than that 



GREATER MORBIDITY AMONG WOMEN 



25 



of the whole female population. Compared with men, the mortah'ty of Germany 
working women between 15-60 years is as 100 (men) to 109 (women). 
(Page 492.) 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night IVork of Women in Industry: Its importance and legal regula- 
tio7i. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Moreover and above all we observe, in all countries where woman is 
protected, a lessening of female and also of infant mortality. For Eng- 
land the convincing argument drawn from this fact has often been cited. 
There, since the rigorous enforcement of the protective legislation con- 
cerning them, the total mortality of women has fallen much below that of 
men. The ratio of the mortality of men to that of women, 1841 to 1850, 
was 23.11 per cent for men to 21.58 per cent for women; from 1881 to 
1890, as 20.22 per cent to 18.01 per cent. The diminution of these figures 
shown by comparing the earlier with the later period should be attributed 
to the great hygienic progress realized during the interval; and the rela- 
tively greater reduction of female mortality should be attributed to the 
protective legislation for the workers, and doubtless also to the activities 
resulting from sick benefits. By way of reaction, this fortunate condition 
was shown in the figures of infant mortality. (Pages xxxvii-xxxviii.) 

The following figures for the German Empire, giving the proportional 
figures for men and women in the Sickness Insurance Department, show 
that after 1891, when women were legally protected, their mortality dim- 
inished more than that of men. 



Comparative Mortality in each 
100 Members 



Years 


Men 


Women 


1890 


1.05 


0.75 


1891 


0.99 


0.74 


1897 


0.91 


0.63 


1898 


0.87 


0.61 


1899 


0.93 


0.66 



(Page xxxviii.) 



26 fatigue and efficiency 

(3) The New Strain in Manufacture 

(a) Speed 

Such being their physical endowment, women are aflPected 
to a far greater degree than men by the growing strain of 
modern industry. Machinery is increasingly speeded up, the 
number of machines tended by individual workers grows larger, 
processes become more and more complex as more operations 
are performed simultaneously. All these changes involve 
correspondingly greater physical strain upon the worker. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of the 
. . . Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children 
in Factories . . . and Reports by the Medical Commissioners. Medical 
Reports by Sir David Barry. 

The first and most influential of all disadvantages of factory work is 
the indispensable, undeviating necessity of forcing both their mental 
and bodily exertions to keep exact pace v^^ith the motions of machinery 
propelled by unceasing, unvarying power. (Page 72.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1875. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30 April, 1875. 

. . . The speed of machinery has already been pushed to the farthest 
extent, and lowered from a point which had been attempted but found 
unprofitable, and injurious to the work. The real evil has long been, not 
too long hours, but too great tension of the nervous system by aiming at a 
larger earning, and consequently, the charge of more machinery than is 
consistent with the health or good work of either. 

Hence also an increase of irritating conflict between master and man 
as to the excellence of workmanship. . . . Far better 60 hours a week 
and less of this sad unnatural strain; for over-tension may kill in 50 hours 
a week, and reasonable work not injure in 60. (Page 32.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vols. XXIX and XXX. 1876. Factories 
and Workshops Acts Commission. Vol. XXX. Minutes of Evi- 
dence. A. Redgrave. 

205. . . . Unhealthiness combined with necessity for close applica- 
tion to rapidly moving machinery. I take those two to be the principal 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE: SPEED 2'] 

and main causes for the limitation of the hours of young persons and great 

/r» i ^ \ BRITAIN 

women. (Page 14.) 

Effects of the Factory System. Allen Clarke. London, Richards, 1899. 

Greater speed of improved machinery, whereby the work is increased 
sixfold, resulting in physical deterioration and mental worry. (Page 41.) 

The toil is ceaseless; the machinery demands constant watching. . . . 
Their feet are never still; their hands are full of tasks; their eyes are al- 
ways on the watch; they toil in an unending strain that is cruel on the 
nerves. (Page 49.) 

And all these hours — ten hours a day — spinner and weaver are on their 
feet; no sitting down; no resting; one must keep up to the machinery 
though agonized with headache or troubled by any other complaint. 
While the engine runs the workers must stand. (Page 51.) 

Women's Work. A. Amy Bulley and Margaret Whitley. London, 
Methuen, 1894. 

. . . machinery has been speeded up to a point which is immensely 
in excess of that which prevailed when the hours were longer. At the 
present time, therefore, the strain upon the attention and the wear and 
tear of the nervous system are greatly in excess of former times, and the 
worker must be "on the stretch" the whole time to attend properly to 
the work. (Pages 151-152.) 

Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical 
Expert on the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and. Lucifer 
Match Committees of the Home Office. London, Murray, 1902. 

The introduction of steam has revolutionized industry. . . . Ma- 
chinery acts with unerring uniformity. At times so simple is its mechan- 
ism that a child can almost guide it, yet how exacting are its demands. 
While machinery has in some senses lightened the burden of human toil, 
it has not diminished fatigue in man. All through the hours of work in a 
factory the hum of the wheels never ceases. . . . While the machinery 
pursues its relentless course and is insensitive to fatigue, human beings are 
conscious, especially towards the end of the day, that the competition is 
unequal, for their muscles are becoming tired and their brains jaded. . . . 
Present-day factory labor is too much a competition of sensitive human 
nerve and muscle against insensitive iron, and yet, apart from an appro- 
priate shortening of the hours of labor, it is difficult to see how this can be 



28 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

remedied. The greater the number of hours machinery runs per day the 
larger is the output for the manufacturer, but the feebler are the human 
limbs that guide it. To the machine time is nothing; to the human being 
each hour that passes beyond a well-defmed limit means increasing fatigue 
and exhaustion. (Pages 115-117.) 

Women IVorkers. Conference in Manchester, 1907. Arranged by the 
National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland in 
conjunction with the Committee of the Manchester Branch of N. U. W. W. 
London, King and Son, 1907. 

Factory legislation has done much to improve general conditions and 
to shorten hours in the textile factories, but the intensity of labour has 
increased. Owing to the overdriving and the speeding up of machinery 
the nervous strain and pressure upon the worker is probably greater than 
in any other industry. (Page 28.) 

The Economic Journal. Vol. XVIII. London, 1908. Gaps in our Fac- 
tory Legislation. B. L. Hutch ins. 

Now it is important to remember that these (ten) hours mean more 
work and more fatigue than they did when the normal day was first in- 
troduced fifty-odd years ago. The speeding up of machinery has in- 
creased the strain, and even as long ago as 1872 shorter hours were agi- 
tated for by the trade unions. . . . One of H. M.'s inspectors tells me 
that "both in cotton and woolen the strain of the full hours with speeding 
up is almost intolerable to the less robust women and girls." (Page 223.) 

Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on 
the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

In trades that are dangerous to health the hours should not be long; 
and in textile industries, as the speed of machinery is quickened and the 
nervous tension upon the worker becomes greater, the hours of labour 
should be proportionally reduced. (Page xi.) 

It is an interesting problem to consider the probable effects upon the 
health of the workpeople in the future of the increased speed at which 
machinery is being run in the factories and the speeding-up of the work in 
ship yards. That there is greater strain upon the nervous system, more 
exhaustion and consequently need for greater leisure, few will deny, and 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! SPEED 29 

that in many instances the hard work induces premature old age goes great 

BRITAIN 

without saying. Will this speedmg-up tend to make female mill-workers 
better mothers and help them to give birth to healthy and robust children, 
or to infants who are puny, ill-nourished, and of a highly strung nervous 
system? In some American factories in which stitched muslin under- 
wear is made, so great has been the improvement in the machinery of late 
that the sewing machines are carrying two to ten needles instead of one as 
formerly, and as a consequence many of the girls are no longer capable of 
the sustained effort necessary to follow the improved speed, and have 
been obliged to relinquish their occupation. The strain of the eyes in 
watching for broken threads in order to stop the machinery is almost in- 
tolerable; it requires an amount of nervous energy and a constancy of 
attention which the operators cannot supply. There is a limit beyond 
which the speeding of machinery cannot be run without detriment to the 
health of the operators unless their hours of work are materially shortened. 

Clearly, therefore, there are occupations, especially the textile trades, 
that tend through sheer strain to wear out the body of the worker and 
induce premature old age. These industries may be said to show their 
baneful effects upon the nervous system. (Pages 3-4.) 

Although the introduction of machinery has cheapened products and 
placed more of them within the reach of the poorer working classes, it 
has not always lightened labour. The rate at which machinery is run 
demands greater attention from the workpeople and imposes upon them 
a severe strain. To the artisan classes the Saturday half-holiday and the 
shortened working day have proven a boon from a purely physical point 
of view. Great as the rush and pressure are in this country, they are even 
greater in America. (Page 5.) 

The lightening of the burden of the textile worker by improved ma- 
chinery has not altogether made mill-work easier, for by raising the speed 
and increasing the output a larger amount of machinery has to be tended, 
and this constant vigilance imposes a considerable strain upon the worker. 
If this is true of simple muscular movements necessitating only mechanical 
supervision, how much greater must be the strain and exhaustion upon 
persons who in their employment are obliged to execute a series of educated 
and rapid muscular movements in which volition is sustained throughout. 
(Page 358.) 

Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the Province of Ontario, Canada, 1894. Canada 

With the increased speed and complications of machinery in textile 
industries, especially in cotton looms, the attendant has more mental 



30 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

worry in watching the machines, and no doubt is more exhausted physi- 
cally after a day's work. (Page 13.) 

Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the Province of Ontario, Canada, 1895. 

A very small fraction of the work requires muscular strength, but it is 
the constant and steady application of the mind, the eager use of the eyes, 
which exhaust and wear out the human body. The entire nervous sys- 
tem is so intently directed to the detail of the work, while the machinery is 
running to its utmost capacity, that by night the workers are not only 
tired and weary, but well-nigh worn out. (Pages 24-25.) 

Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the Province of Ontario, Canada, 
1896. Toronto, 1897. 

Though there is little work which requires great muscular strength 
or exertion in our factories, yet the alertness and exactness of attention 
and constant application required exhaust the nervous vitality very 
rapidly. Most of the operators are necessarily on their feet nearly all the 
time, and this fact has an unfavorable effect upon the health of women and 
girls. (Page 22.) 

Canada Labour Gazette, August, 1903. Report of British Columbia Royal 
Labour Commission. Dawson. Ottawa. 

The report concludes with a recommendation as to the shortening of 
the hours of labour. "In these days," say the Commissioners, "when 
the human energies are strained to their utmost amid whirling dust and 
machinery, long hours are a crime against nature. The machine should 
be the servant of man, and not man the slave of the machine. One of the 
most legitimate modes in which a legislature can aid in improving the 
condition of the workmen is by the shortenmg of hours. (Page 136.) 

Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Em- 
ployment between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd. and 
Operators at Toronto, Ontario. The Department of Labour, Canada. 
Ottawa, 1907. Conclusions and Recommendations. 

We agree entirely with the view expressed by the local manager that 
it is the pace that kills, and the working of women at high pressure at 
work of this kind should be made a crime at law as it is a crime against 
Nature herself. (Page 98.) 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! SPEED 3 1 

New South Wales. Legislative Assembly. Report of the Working of the AUSTRALIA 
Factories' and Shops' Act. 1904. 

Miss Duncan, Inspector: 

The effect of factory work on the individual appears to be to produce 
a skillful specialized worker moving within narrow limits and ill-fitted to 
rise above them. 

On the physical side, the want of exercise among those who sit all 
day at their work, the long standing of others in those processes which 
cannot be conveniently carried on when sitting, in either case the over- 
exercise of certain muscles and the non-exercise of others, must bring 
about a very one-sided development. . . . Again the constant vibration 
and noise, the unflagging attention demanded by work on power ma- 
chines, and the high rate of speed, must tend to operate disadvantageously 
on the nervous system. (Page 13.) 



Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin, 1896. ITALY 
Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

By constant increase in the rate of movement, by instruments ever 
better adapted to their ends, modern society endeavours to multiply and 
render more productive the work both of muscle and of mind. The pro- 
digious extension of the arts and the increasing velocity of machinery 
combine to hurry us onward; our haste will grow from more to more, till 
it reaches an extreme point at which the law of exhaustion sets an in- 
superable barrier to the greed of gain. . . . (Page 168.) 

The machinery in our factories is ever becoming more ponderous; it is 
increasing in size, velocity of motion, and productivity, and this increase 
still continues despite the fact that we have already surpassed the furthest 
limit set at first by our imagination. (Page 169.) 

One very quietly perceives, however, that those machines are not 
made to lessen human fatigue, as poets were wont to dream. The veloc- 
ity of the flying wheels, the whirling of the hammers, and the furious speed 
at which everything moves, these things tell us that time is an important 
factor in the progress of industry, and that here in the factory the activity 
of the workers must conquer the forces of nature. The hiss of the steam, 
the rattling of the pulleys, the shaking of the joints, the snorting of these 
gigantic automata, all warn us that they are inexorable in their motion, 
that man is condemned to follow them without a moment's rest, because 



32 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



every minute wasted consumes time that is worth money, seeing that it 
renders useless the coal and the movement of these colossi. (Page 171.) 

Marx, in his celebrated work {Le Capital, Karl Marx, p. 161), devotes 
a chapter to machinery, and arrives at the following conclusions: that 
all our inventions have not diminished human fatigue, but simply the 
price of commodities; that machinery has rendered worse the condition 
of the worker, because by rendering strength of no avail it has entailed the 
employment of women and children, instead of shortening the working- 
day it has prolonged it, instead of reducing fatigue it has rendered it more 
dangerous and injurious; that to the accumulation of riches corresponds 
an increase of poverty; that owing to machinery society is receding 
further and further from its ideal; that the reality has not corresponded 
to our hopes. 

. . . The powerful automaton of mechanics wants nothmg but intel- 
ligence and a nervous system; this want a child or a woman can supply 
and guide the blind giants by the hand. It is a grave accusation to 
launch against science, that in making herself mistress of the forces of 
nature she tends to establish a monopoly for machinery, to make labour 
the slave of capital. There are, moreover, those who fear that human 
fatigue will come to be less and less regarded, and that the workers will 
be gradually eliminated and dismissed without means of subsistence, that 
the intelligence of the people is deteriorating, because the greater the per- 
fection of the machine, the less the skill and ability required from the 
worker. (Pages 173-174.) 



Amtliche MiUheilungen aus deyi Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
beamten. XXII. 1897. [Official Information from Reports of the 
(German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

The demand for shorter hours of work is justified by the hardships 
in which modern industry has plunged the whole working class. In a 
comparatively short time, for instance, machinery of much greater speed 
has been installed in a number of branches of industry. Even the young, 
industrious workman must stretch every nerve to keep up with the speed- 
ing process necessitated by machinery. (Page 156.) 

Machine work allows no time for rest and variety, the workman's 
nerves suffer, and when, as sometimes happens, his Sunday's rest is taken 
from him, he breaks down. Older workmen cannot accommodate them- 
selves to this pace, and the rapidity of development has been such that a 
gradual adaptation to the altered conditions is for them absolutely out of 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! SPEED 33 

the question. The result is that older people are excluded more and more Germany 
from factory work. (Page 157.) No unsatisfactory results appear to have 
followed in any instance where hours have been shortened. (Page 158.) 



Jahresberichte der Gewerhe-AufsicUsheamten im Konigreich IViirttemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemberg for 1902.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1903. 

In general the reduction of women's hours takes place with the utmost 
slowness, sometimes under pressure of organization . . . sometimes where 
employers have come to an agreement among themselves. . . . 

But this reduction of hours does not keep pace with advances in tech- 
nique . . . where there is an obvious tendency to make use of human 
power to the fullest possible extent. This is especially true in the textile 
mills, where certain older processes are modified by new contrivances. 
. . , The result now is, that, while the wages or skilled spinners (women) 
have risen about 12 or 13 per cent, the number of spindles, on which they 
must concentrate attention for 11 hours, has been raised from 500 to 750 
— an increase of 50 per cent. This is not quite the same as saying that 
the strain upon the spinners is 50 per cent greater, since a certain number 
of helpers are provided, nevertheless the attention and skill demanded are 
much greater than was formerly the case. . . . Such examples make it 
plain that, with this increasing intensity of strain in work, the hours of 
work must be correspondingly shortened if the people are to be protected 
from ruin of health. (Pages 74-75.) 



Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich IViirttemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1903. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the King- 
dom of IViirttemberg for 1903.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1904. 

To-day the technical development of industry leads to ever and ever 
greater demands upon the intensity and attention of the worker. When 
the speed of the machine is greatest, then the workman has more given to 
him to attend to. This uncontested fact of rising claims upon the physi- 
cal and mental capacity of the workman, which is more or less strikingly 
evident in every department of labor, has in recent years brought the ques- 
tion of shorter hours to the front. The necessity of compensation through 
shorter hours is not only recognized by the inspectors, but by many em- 
ployers as well. (Page 96.) 



34 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY J ahreshcrichte der Gewerhe-AufsicMsheamten und Bergbehorden fiir das Jahr 
1904. Bd. II. IViirttemberg. [Reports of the {German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1904.] Vol. II. IViirttemberg. Berlin, Decker, 
1905. 

The claim for a ten-hour day for women is an old and much-contested 
one: factory inspectors are continually reminded of the great need for its 
fulfilment, as they see how technical improvements in machinery increase 
the productivity of the machine and consequently intensify the demands 
made upon the working strength and capacity of the wage-earners. And 
this is especially true of the industries which employ women in large num- 
bers. (Page 4.102) 

Die Arbeits^eit der Fabrikarbeiterinnen. Nach Berichten der Gewerbe- 
Aufsichtsbeamten bearbeitet im Reich samt des Innern. [The Working 
Hours of Women in Factories. From the Reports of the {German) Factory 
Inspectors compiled in the Imperial Home Office.] Berlin, Decker, 1905. 

From Frankfurt am Oder it is reported that the insurance records for 
two textile mills show steady deterioration in the health of the women em- 
ployed eleven hours a day. One reason for this is believed to be the speed- 
ing up of the machinery. Vigorous weavers stated repeatedly that the 
old, slow looms exhausted them less in twelve and thirteen hours than the 
swift new looms in eleven hours. The more intensive work requires 
better nourishment; but there is no adequate increase in wages to afford 
this improved food, and the eleven-hour day of more rapid work is pre- 
sumably responsible for the deteriorated health. (Page 119.) 

Archiv fiir Unfallheilkunde, Gewerbehygiene, und Gewerbekrankheiten. 
Bd. I . Ober den Gesundheitsschuti der Gewerblichen Arbeiter. [Pro- 
tection of the Workingman's Health.] Dr. Schaefer. Stuttgart, 
Enke, 1896. 

The more technic is perfected, the more complicated the machine and 
the more rapid its speed, the greater are the demands made upon the 
workman and the more important it becomes to shorten his hours of work. 
(Page 204.) 

H andworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. 
Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. Loening, 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! SPEED 35 

Professor of Law in Halle. Arheitsieit. [Hours of IVork.] Dr. H. GERMANY 
Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

The workman sees in reduction of working hours the surest remedy 
for all the dangers that arise from his work, and that menace him with 
premature exhaustion of his working power, his only capital. The more 
piece work and speeding stimulate the intensity of production, the more 
quickly a dangerous degree of fatigue is likely to appear, resulting from 
the one-sided exertion of certain nerves or muscles (a feature of the sub- 
division of labor). (Page 1204.) 

Intensiveness of work means progress for the worker, so long as the 
tempo keeps within customary bounds; that is, while speed can be main- 
tained without requiring continuous new impulses of will-power. If, 
in spite of shorter hours, intensiveness of work leads to chronic over- 
fatigue, then it is just as necessary to overcome that evil as the over- 
fatigue resulting from overlong hours of less intensity. (Page 1217.) 

Untersuchungen Uber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fabrikhevolkerung der swiTZER- 
Schwei^. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauer- 
lander, 1889. 

Instead of becoming wearied by personal labor, as in earlier stages of 
industry, it is today the unremitting, tense concentration in watching 
the machine, the necessary rapidity of motion, that fatigues the worker. 
(Page 62.) 

An das Schweii. Industriedepartement, Bern. Die Eidgenossischen- 
Fahrikinspectoren. [Report of the Swiss Factory Inspectors to the Swiss 
Department of Labor on the Revision of the Factory Laws.] Schaff- 
hausen, 1904. 

As technique becomes more developed, machinery more complicated, 
and the pace swifter, so much more insistent become the demands of the 
workers and the claims of hygienists for a shorter work day as a physio- 
logical necessity. (Page 23.) 

When we consider the great material advantages of modern industry in 
being enabled to economize material by the use of water power day and 
night, by keeping its furnaces forever burning, and so on, it seems as if it 
might well be in place to economize also the strength of the people by 
shortening their shifts of work. (Pages 34-35.) 



36 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



AUSTRIA Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, 

1894. Vol. VII, Sec. V. Cher das Verhdltniss der Dauer des Ar- 
beitstages {ur Gesundheit des Arheiters und dessen Einfluss auf die 
Offentliche Gesundheit. [The Length of the Working Day in its Rela- 
tion to the Workman's Health and its Influence upon Public Health.] 
Dr. E. R. J. Krejcsi, Vice-Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in 
Budapest. Budapest, 1896. 

In branches of industry where machinery is used, the normal working 
day of which the worker is fully capable is shorter in proportion as ma- 
chinery is more complicated and the demands made upon the intelligence, 
attention, and memory of the worker are more incessant. 

Such workers expend both their mental and physical strength in stren- 
uous exertion, and thus their normal energy is sooner exhausted and the 
injurious results of overstrain become evident earlier than in simpler 
forms of labor. (Page 326.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial Labor Statistics, 1892. 

The constant nervous tension from continued exertion in a modern 
factory or workshop, for a period of ten hours, is a severe strain upon the 
physical system. Work is not done in the old, slow way, and, in nearly 
all industries, by the present methods, from two to four times the quantity 
of product is turned out in the ten hours. How much faster is the opera- 
tive compelled to work, and how much greater is the strain, to accomplish 
this amount of work, in comparison with the old twelve-hour method. 
(Page 11.) 



Seventh Annual Convention of the International Association of Factory 
Inspectors of North America. Chicago, Sept. 19-22, 1893. Forest 
City Printing House, Cleveland, Ohio. 

Inspector Dyson, of Massachusetts: 

Let it be remembered that the gradual reduction in the hours of labor 
has been met by the manufacturers with improved machinery. . . . 

In a textile mill there is a very small fraction of the work that requires 
muscular strength. But it is the constant and steady application of the 
mind, the eager use of the eyes, which exhaust and wear out the human 
body. 

The entire nervous system is so intently directed to the detail of the 
work while the machinery is running to its utmost capacity, that by night 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! SPEED 37 

the worker is not only tired and weary, but wellnigh worn out. (Pages united 

118-119.) STATES 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and 
Conditions of Capital and Labor employed in Manufactures and Gen- 
eral Business. Vol. VII. 1900. Testimony of Mrs. Fanny B. Ames, 
former Factory Inspector of the State of Massachusetts. 

Mrs. Robertson tells me that when she was a girl, to run one or two 
looms was as much as any woman would have tried. Now, in some m- 
stances, there are women running nine looms, and the looms have more 
than doubled or trebled their speed. This means more work and harder 
work. (Page 63.) 

United States Congress, House Report No. 1793. {4405). Hours of 
Laborers on Public Works of the United States. Report from the Com- 
mittee on Labor. 57th Congress, 1st Session. 1901-1902. 

While there is still a variance of opinion on the question whether 
modern machinery and methods so lighten the physical drudgery of most 
occupations as to have an equivalent effect to the shortening of hours in 
the conservation of energy, or whether such machinery and methods 
operate to so tax the nervous powers as to be equivalent in exhaustive 
effects to the lengthening of hours, your committee are of the opinion, 
after what has been said on both sides, that the higher tension of modern 
employment is at least a full offset to the saving accomplished in muscular 
force. 

This effect of modern machinery on the powers of the worker has been 
a question more immediately affecting the American workman than those ' 
of any other nations. The foreign workman has very generally held to 
the surface theory of some older varieties that machinery is a competitor 
of labor and the one most threatening to his employment, hence labor has 
strenuously and to a considerable extent successfully resisted the intro- 
duction of modern machinery. (Pages 9-10.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission. Final Report, Vol. 
XIX, 1902. 

It is brought out that in nearly all occupations an increasing strain 
and intensity of labor is required by modern methods of production. 
. . . The introduction of machinery and the division of labor have made 
it possible to increase greatly the speed of the individual workman 



38 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED The testimony of a representative of the Cotton Weavers' Association 

STATES 

shows this increasing strain of work. He says: 

. . . "Anybody who works in the mills now knows it is not like what 
it was twenty-five or thirty years ago, because the speed of the machinery 
has been increased to such an extent, and they have to keep up with it." 
(Page 763.) 

Even these cases where machinery has not increased the intensity of 
exertion, a long workday with the machine, especially where work is 
greatly specialized, in many cases reduces the grade of intelligence. The 
old handwork shops were schools of debate and discussion, and they are 
so at the present time where they survive in country districts; but the 
factory imposes silence and discipline for all except the highest. Long 
workdays under such conditions tend to inertia and dissipation when the 
day's work is done. (Page 772.) 

Report of the Maine Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1908. 

For the first time, women were interviewed who were running twelve 
and sixteen Draper looms. These machines are practically a recent 
addition, and are so arranged that the filling in the shuttle is changed 
automatically, thus enabling them to go at a greater rate of speed and 
with less interruption. The women are not expected to clean, oil, or 
sweep. This matter was quite fully discussed and the complaint made 
that the work was too hard, but that they tried to do it, as they were de- 
pendent upon their positions and they knew there were plenty of foreign 
men waiting for their places. Where a woman has been accustomed to 
tend a six loom set, with the Drapers she is given from twelve to sixteen 
which extend over quite an area. There is no time for sitting during the 
day, as when employed on the other looms. One woman said she could 
not sleep at night after running these fast machines, and many have had 
to give up their places and find other work. 

This marks another evolution in the machinery world. Years ago, 
a woman tended two slowly running looms. Later, as the hours of work 
grew less, the number of looms was increased to four and six, and now 
with the Drapers, an operative is expected to look out for twelve or six- 
teen. (Pages 42-43.) 

Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, Industries and Commerce. 1909- 
1910. 

As has been frequently pointed out, the work of women is so divided as 
to leave no variety. The great "speed" that is maintained is so heavy a 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE: SPEED 39 

demand upon the nervous force that long hours are far more wearisome united 
than labor that offered greater change. When the machine needles take 
3,500, 4,000 or 4,200 stitches per minute the girl does not drive the ma- 
chine — the machine drives the girl! She is not mistress of her work — 
it is her master! The presser foot falls and like a flash of light the work 
flies from the hand. Every nerve is tense and strained to follow the light- 
ning like whir of the machine that it drives both work and worker. The 
expenditure of mere bodily strength is not so great; it is the demand upon 
the nervous force and hence it is that the "pace-makers," as the most 
rapid of the operatives are called, are the very young. Older operatives 
learn by sad experience, that "speeding," which means, of course, a high 
wage, is in the end the most wasteful of all forms of human labor. 
Harmful as are the long hours it is literally "the pace that kills." 
For it goes without saying that women so employed cannot in the very 
nature of things be healthful themselves, and it is absolutely impossible 
for them to be healthy mothers. (Page 604.) 

Report on Condition of Woman and Child fVage-Earners in the United 
States. Vol. III. Glass Industry. Senate Document 645. 61st 
Congress, 2nd Session, 1911. 

The two chief characteristics of the electric-lamp industry, the minute- 
ness of the work and the extreme speed with which the operations are 
performed, while not peculiar to it, are found to exist in a degree almost 
without parallel in any other industry. In some industries the speed 
rate is highly developed by means of machinery and special systems of 
wage payment; in others the work is even more delicate and requires as 
great accuracy as the electric-lamp work, but in no other probably are 
both features developed together to the degree which characterizes this 
particular industry. Out of this combination of speed and minuteness, 
linked as they are at times with other undesirable conditions, arise nearly 
all the evil effects attributable to the industry. 

From the time the various filaments are baked until the "mount" is 
completed the operators are dealing with materials so delicate and minute 
that they can be clearly seen only in the best of light and by persons pos- 
sessing at least normally good sight. This can be very easily appreciated 
by inspecting an ordinary carbon or tungsten lamp, the filament of which 
is not clearly visible unless the lamp is held close to the eyes and in a 
strong light. To handle one such filament at leisure would be neither 
difficult nor trying; every day the housewife performs an equally delicate 
operation in threading a very fine cambric needle. If, however, this 



40 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

needle-threading operation were repeated two or three thousand times a 
day, and particularly if it were done at a piece rate, which urges one to 
the highest speed in order to increase one's earnings and to secure the 
higher rate paid for very rapid production, it would soon assume tremen- 
dous proportions to the person doing the work. There is perhaps no better 
illustration of the general nature of these occupations than of fme needle 
threading repeated at top speed day in and day out. (Pages 477-8). 

As has been pointed out above almost all the operations performed are 
light, requiring no muscular strain and indeed very little muscular exer- 
tion. There is, however, a nervous strain manifesting itself in a feverish 
concentration on the work, to be seen in most of the establishments and 
particularly in the larger and more modern plants. This situation, the 
ultimate results of which will be apparent to all those familiar with the 
effects produced on girls and young women by undue concentration and 
feverish eagerness to hurry the assigned task, is a result of the attempt 
to reduce the cost of production of the lamp. (Pages 478-479.) 

Industrial Conference under the Auspices of the National Civic Federation, 
New York, 1902. The Eight-hour Day. Prof. George Gunton, 
Institute of Social Economics. New York, The IVinthrop Press, 1903. 

The factory system makes this (shortening of the working day) more 
and more necessary in proportion as it is perfected in its mechanism. It 
becomes all the time more and more exacting. The greater the perfection 
of the machinery or the method, the more attention is required. (Page 
173.) 

American Academy of Political and Sodal Science. Vol. XXVII, No. 3, 
1906. The Manhood Tribute to the Modern Machine: Influences 
Determining the Length of the Trade Life among Machinists. Phila- 
delphia, The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1906. 

James O'Connell, President International Association of Machinists: 

The purpose of this paper is to prove that with the introduction of 
modern high-speed machinery the life of the operator of such machinery 
has been shortened. . . . 

Great changes have been made in the last quarter of a century, and 
every industry has been affected with the advent of the machine, but in 
no other sphere of human activity has such a change been affected as has 
occurred in the machine shop. (Pages 491-492.) 

First of all, old men have disappeared. 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE: SPEED 4 1 

. . . Time was when age was honored in the machine shop; . . . united 
The speeding up of the machine has changed all this, ... his added 
years prevent him from keeping pace with the machine, its gait is too 
rapid, so he is forced aside to make room for a younger man. . . . 

The youth fresh from school . . . enters the machine shop. . . . 
The great strain, both mental and physical, soon proves too much for 
him. ... If his period of service in the machine shop is broken by in- 
tervals of rest and recreation, nervous breakdown is averted. 

. . . Great care and watchfulness to guard against the effects of the 
nervous strain are necessary when the youth begins his career in the ma- 
chine shop, for skill, exact skill, cannot be acquired without it. And 
when proficiency has been reached, although the young machinist does not 
notice it, he is still bearing the strain upon his nerves. It is this over- 
exertion kept up at high tension, day in and day out, year after year, that 
is shortening the life of the machine-shop worker, and robbing him of 
longevity, (Page 494.) 

Lessen the number of hours the worker is forced to work at high speed, 
concert pitch, and his nerves will remain normal, and he will live to the 
full — his promised threescore years and ten. (Page 495.) 

Ihid. Length of the Trade Life in the Glass Bottle Industry. 

Denis A. Hayes, President of the Glass Bottle Blowers' Association of 
America: 

Each year the production of the individual workman becomes greater. 
The highest day's work of this season becomes the standard for the next. 

A man working according to present-day methods can make three times 
as many bottles in a day of eight and a half hours as he did twenty years 
ago in a day of ten hours, but the expenditure of strength and energy is 
now much greater than it was then. 

. . . The hours of labor should be still further reduced, so that men 
would, after leaving their work, retain sufficient mental and physical vigor 
for recreation, study, and social intercourse. (Page 498.) 



Women and the Trades. Elizabeth B. Butler. The Pittsburgh Survey. 
Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publica- 
tion Committee, 1909. 

A third factor affecting health, beside essential trade disease and un- 
healthful building construction, enters into the industrial environment. 
This is speeding. In the different industries we have seen how the pace of 



42 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED many workers is kept high by the speed of machinery. A travelling chain 

carries cans of beans past a row of cannery operatives. They must slip 
a bit of pork into each can as it passes, and the chain is set at a pace which 
keeps each girl rigid in her place, with every nerve at a tension, fixed on 
the one motion required of her. In a cracker factory girls lift hot crackers 
from a travelling conveyor, packing them in oblong boxes with one quick 
motion, as the conveyor passes; each girl is responsible for all the crackers 
on a certain section of the conveyor, which is set at a pace requiring her 
utmost physical and nervous effort. 

Among hand workers, and workers who control their machines, system.s 
of pace setting are combined, as we have seen, with piece-rate payments to 
keep up the speed. Four stogy factories, for example, stimulate their 
girl rollers by a sliding scale which provides $.13 j4 a 100 when 400 stogies 
are rolled from a pound, but only $.10 when 300 are rolled. To earn the 
pay customary in the district (12 cents a hundred), girls must cut close, 
and at the same time work at an almost impossible rate of speed. In 
another factory, rollers receive only 9 cents a hundred if they make less 
than 6000 stogies a week, and 11 cents a hundred (the market rate in one 
district) if they make 6000 or over. The foreman of a printing establish- 
ment paid his girls seven dollars a week for an average output (in register 
folding) of 300 an hour. A system of piece payments was introduced, 
and in two days the rate went up to 500 an hour; week work was then re- 
sumed at the old price, and the girls were required to keep the new pace. 
A lamp factory pays 14 cents an hour for punching 600 pieces, and a cent 
for every hundred pieces finished within the same time. This list of 
examples could be extended indefinitely. 

Thus the speed of machinery, when pay is by the week, or a piece-pay- 
ment system, impels the worker to increase the quantity of her output, 
and repeated rate-cutting in some industries seems not only to keep weekly 
earnings down to a customary level, but to spur the workers to a fiercer 
pace. The nervous strain inevitable under these conditions has no in- 
considerable share in causing the positive breakdown which so frequently 
follows a girl into her home after she has left the factory. It is the final 
exaction that the trade makes of her. (Pages 365-66.) 



(b) Monotony 

Besides the physical strain due to speed and complexity 
of machinery, health is injured by the extreme monotony 
of many branches of industry. Specialization has been 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! MONOTONY 43 

carried so far that change and variety of work is reduced 
to a minimum. Minute division of labor results in the con- 
stant repetition of similar motions and processes by the 
same worker, favoring the onset of fatigue and requiring 
for relief the establishment of a shorter workday. 

British Sessional Papers. Vols. XXIX-XXX. 1876. Factory and g^^^jj 
Workshops Acts Commission. Vol. XXIX. Report. 

We have already referred more than once to the unremitting and 
monotonous character of all labor at a machine driven by steam. If 
the day's work of a housemaid or even of a charwoman be closely looked 
at and compared with that of an ordinary mill hand in a card room, or 
spinning room, it will be seen that the former, though occasionally making 
greater muscular efforts than are ever exacted from the latter, is yet con- 
tinually changing both her occupation and her posture, and has very fre- 
quent intervals of rest. Work at a machine has inevitably a treadmill 
character about it; each step may be easy, but it must be performed at 
the exact moment under pain of consequences. In hand work and house 
work there is a certain freedom of doing or of leaving undone. Mill 
{i. e. machine) work must be done as if by clockwork. . . . The people 
are tied as it were, to machinery moving at a great speed in certain opera- 
tions; again it has been alleged that the state of the atmosphere is very 
unhealthy, and the temperature at a great height, and from the employ- 
ment of machinery the speed has been so much increased that the wear 
and tear, not merely of the body but of the mind also, of the operatives 
were too great for them to bear. (Pages xxix-xxx.) 



The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, 
M.D., A.B., F.R.C.P. Consulting Physician to the North Stafford- 
shire Infirmary; late Milroy lecturer at the Royal College of Physicians, 
etc. London, Percival, 1892. 

The majority of indoor industries have the disadvantage of presenting 
little variety in the methods of working, especially in manufactories, where 
there is great monotony in whatever branch of employment is pursued, 
and the workman counts for little else than an appendage to a machine. 
Day by day the worker is called upon to do the same mechanical act, 
without feeling a personal interest in the result of his labour; for this is 
no product of his thinking or inventive faculty, but predetermined by 



44 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

mechanical contrivances; and day by day he continues at his task, weari- 
some to the spirit, earning a fixed rate of payment, sufficient, usually, to 
supply his animal requirements, but holding out small prospect of escape 
from toil, and whilst he can perform it, or a coming period of competency 
and enjoyment. (Page 18.) And, generally speaking, it may be asserted 
of machinery that it calls for little or no brain exertion on the part of those 
connected with its operations, it arouses no interest, and is wearisome by 
monotony. Machinery, consequently, has nothing in it to quicken or 
brighten the intelligence, though it may sharpen the sense of sight, and 
stimulate muscular activity in some one limited direction. 

. . . That some effect must follow upon the rapid whirling of machines 
and the noise produced, is a reasonable inference. The special senses so 
exposed are necessarily subjected to a species of strain or overuse. Those 
unaccustomed to machinery are dazed by its operations, and willingly 
escape from its presence; and those regularly occupied with it, in conduct- 
ing and regulating its action, and in intently watching its output, can only 
do so at the expense of more or less wear and tear of nerve function, and, 
indeed, of the whole nervous system. Their fatigue is the fatigue of 
watching, not of working. (Pages 25-26.) 

Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844. Frederick Engels. 
Translated by Florence Kelley. London, Sonnenschein, 1892. 

The supervision of machinery, the joining of broken threads, is no 
activity which claims the operative's thinking powers, yet it is of a sort 
which prevents him from occupying his mind with other things. We 
have seen, too, that this work affords the muscles no opportunity for 
physical activity. Thus it is, properly speaking, not work but tedium, 
the most deadening, wearing process conceivable. The operative is 
condemned to let his physical and mental powers decay in this utter 
monotony. . . . Moreover, he must not take a moment's rest; the engine 
moves unceasingly. . . . This condemnation to be buried alive in the 
mill, to give constant attention to the tireless machine, is felt as the keen- 
est torture by the operatives, and its action upon mind and body is in the 
long run stunting in the highest degree. (Page 177.) 

The Effects of the Factory System. Allen Clarke. London, Grant 
Richards, 1899. 

And all these hours — 10 hours a day, spinner and weaver are on their 
feet, no sitting down, no resting; one must keep up to the machinery 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! MONOTONY 45 

though agonized with headache, or troubled by any other complaint, great 
While the engine runs the workers must stand. ... It will thus be seen ^^'^^^^ 
that this employment is a severe and ceaseless mental strain that makes a 
tribe of toilers alert at their tasks, but weakens the physique, as does all 
narrow and monotonous mental strain if continuous. (Pages 51-52.) 

No doubt the factory system, by the increased work and worry, con- 
tributes a good share of the imbeciles to the asylums. It is well known 
that monotony is a cause of insanity, and there is nothing more dreadily 
monotonous than factory work. (Page 66.) 



IVomens IVork and IVages. Edward Cadbury, M. Cecile Matheson, 
and George Shann. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1906. 

The incessant noise of the machinery, the excessive monotony of the 
work (presswork), and, above all, the long hours, which are too often spent 
in an ill-lighted and ill-ventilated atmosphere, all tend to produce a de- 
pressing and deadening effect which cannot fail to destroy alertness of 
attention and to create a craving for excitement which will catch at the 
least opening for distraction. . . . (Page 53.) 



Women Workers. Conference in Manchester, 1907. Arranged hy the 
National Union of Women Workers of Great Britain and Ireland in 
. Conjunction with the Committee of the Manchester Branch of the N. U. 
W. W. London, King and Son, 1907. 

Monotony, noise, and dirt are inseparable from many occupations and 
have a depressing effect on vitality that we are apt to forget. In many 
cases only the movements of a machine are required in tending a machine, 
and this monotony is largely responsible for the ungovernable excitement 
shown by many boys and girls when released from work. As one girl 
said, "When you have been a few days at a press you want to scream." 
Imagine passing ten hours a day, with never a week's holiday, unless one 
is ill or out of work, amid the noise of looms, the dirt and dust of polishing 
lathes, in the heat of a lacquering shop, or in the odour of rubber manu- 
facture or of French polishing. (Page 106.) Monotony of work, move- 
ment, or position may be responsible for mental sluggishness, but its 
effects are more apparent in the low standard of physical development 
reached by many of the working classes, while the whole trend of industrial 
development is to increase and not decrease this monotony. (Page 108.) 



46 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



The Economic Journal. Vol. XVIII. London, 1908. Gaps in our Fac- 
tory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins. 

The extreme monotony of factory work is in itself a cause of strain. 
(Page 224.) 

Gesammelte Ahhandlungen, Bd. III. [Complete IVorks, Vol. III.] Die 
Volkswirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Verkiir^ung des Industriellen 
Arheitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society at Jena, 1901. 
Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

Our whole industrial labor nowadays is characterized by what we call 
"Effects of the Division of Labor." . . . 

This division and subdivision has become a necessary condition of 
progress, and, much as we may deplore its effects in certain details, it is 
impossible to abandon it. It stamps all work with uniformity. . . . 
With this sameness and continually recurring monotony we also get the 
continuous fatigue of the same organ, — of the same group of muscles, — 
of the same nerve centers, — of the same part of the brain, — because all 
that is to be done, whether muscular or brain work, must be constantly 
repeated in the same manner from morning to night, day by day, and week 
by week. (Page 225.) , 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung dur.ch Berufsarbeit. 
[Fatigue Resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth, Regierungsrat, 
Potsdam. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908. 

. . . With the progressive division of labor, work has become more 
and more mechanical. ... A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, 
especially neurasthenia, must be ascribed to this monotony, — to the ab- 
sence of spontaneity or joy in work. (Page 613.) 



Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases. 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquenia in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to Certain 
Forms of Labor.] Prof. Crisafulli. 

To understand how cerebral fatigue can cause the arrest of mental 
development in youths and criminal actions in adults, we must bear in 
mind that the special functions of the brain have separate centres, the 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE! MONOTONY 47 

foundation of the psychic and motor-psychic life of individuals. Thus, italy 
there is a centre for hearing, another for sight, another for speaking, etc. 
When only one centre works it becomes overfatigued much more easily 
than if the functions were alternately performed by the various centres. 

Here, then, is another factor in overfatigue due to the monotony of 
work, interrupted only at long intervals. 

This monotony is the determining cause of local disturbances and en- 
dangers the entire organism. (Page 150.) 

The National Civic Federation Review. Vol. II, No. 8. Jan.-Feh., 1906. E^IIP 
The First Annual Meeting of the New England Civic Federation. 
Boston, Jan. 11, 1906. 

Marcus M. Marks, President of the National Association of Clothing 
Manufacturers: 

. . . Labor asks for shorter hours . . . because the conditions of 
employment have been changed so much in recent years that workers feel 
justly entitled to a shortening of the day. They contend that the intro- 
duction of machinery has in a large degree replaced the exercise of the 
muscles, by the use of the eye and mind. This causes more strain on the 
system. They contend further that specialization of labor has taken away 
the restful variety and change of occupation which formerly diversified 
the day's employment, and has substituted a regular monotony of daily 
labor which is much more tiring. For, whilst a workman might contribute 
his maximum efficiency in working to twelve hours per day when strictly 
variegated effort was required, the greater strain of the present so-called 
"improved" condition of labor may now bring about the necessity for a 
reduction of hours in order to preserve the same degree of efficiency. 
(Pages.) 

IVomen and the Trades. Elizabeth B. Butler. The Pittsburgh Survey. 
Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publica- 
tion Committee, 1909. 

The only women in the trades considered who can be called skilled in 
any true sense are the millinery trimmers and telegraph operators. 

Added together, however, the women of these two groups make less 
than 3 per cent of the 22,185 under consideration in Pittsburgh, and from 
their work we can scarcely judge of the nature of women's work as a whole. 
That work is, as a rule, of a nature to require neither strength, endurance, 
intelligence nor training. . . . 



48 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



One woman puts fifty hinges a minute through a machine. Each 
second a hinge is lifted out and sHpped into place, the hand drawn back 
as the machine moves, another hinge lifted and slipped into place — this 
for ten hours each working day. Other women spread out the tobacco 
leaves on the suction plates, put the half-made bunch in the leaf, press the 
treadle and push the rolled stogy aside; spread out another leaf, cut, put 
the bunch in place, press the treadle and push aside. They pack crack- 
ers, candy, glass, lamps, with quick, machine-taught, unvarying motions, 
lifting, wrapping, putting in place, for ten hours each day. Still others 
steady the paper in a box-covering machine, guide it according to the 
gauge, replace it when the strip runs out, guide it according to the gauge. 
Such work not only requires no thought; it is stupefying. The operative 
who has become in truth an adjunct of the machine, works with a 
machine-like precision, and with machine-like absence of thought. Work 
which demands nothing of the intelligence, costs the intelligence more 
than work which demands too much. (Pages 370-371.) 



(c) Piece Work 

All the evils of speed and monotony in industrial estab- 
lishments are intensified by the abuses of piece work. 
When each worker aims to work faster for the sake of a 
slight increase in wages, a premium is put upon feverish 
activity, regardless of the physical cost to the worker. 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Untersuchungen iiher die Gesundheitsverhaltnisse der Fahrikbevolkerung der 
Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauer- 
Idnder, 1899. 

. . . The larger proportion of women in factories is certainly to be 
thought of in estimating the effects of the violent motion of the machinery 
on health. . . . But even more important is the overexertion . . . this 
is exhausting, especially when the practice of piece work spurs the women 
to greater exertion, and much more so when an overseer, warning and 
reprimanding the workers, urges them to the utmost degree of exertion. 
(Page 82.) 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE: PIECE WORK 49 

Deutsche Mediiinische IVochenschrift, Nr. 21, 25. Mai. Die Neurasthenie in GERMANY 
Arheiterkreisen. [Neurasthenia in the Working Classes.] Dr. P. 
Leubuscher and Dr. W. Bibrowicz, formerly of the Beeliti Sani- 
tarium of the State Old Age and Invalidity Department of Berlin. 
Berlin, 1905. 

. . . Work has become very different! Piece work has indeed ob- 
tained larger wages, but has developed an impetus and speed and intensity 
of effort that used to be unknown, and this invariably crushes the weaker 
workers, those for whom all work is a heavier burden than for the strong. 
Continuous anxiety is felt by these lest they fall behind. Then sometimes 
voluntarily, sometimes compulsorily, overtime is undertaken, and so it 
turns out that the working hours, instead of being comparatively shorter 
than the usual day, are really much longer, and, by reason of the irregu- 
larity, far more exhausting. (Page 821.) 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarheit. 
[Fatigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth, Regierungsrat, 
Potsdam. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908. 

Of greater importance is the excessive overstrain of piece work, which 
indeed pays better, but at the cost of a speed and intensity of work 
which was formerly unknown. That these injurious effects first assail 
the weaker part of the working population is self-evident. (Pages 614 
and 615.) 



// Ramaiiini. Giornale Italiano Di Medicina Sociale. Anno I, 10-11. ixaly 
[Italian Journal of Social Medicine.] October-November, 1907. 
Le Stagioni, i giorni, le ore degli infortuni del lavoro. [Days, Seasons, 
and Hours when Industrial Accidents occur.] Prof. G. Pieraccini <27^J 
Dr. R. Maffei, Head Physicians in the Royal Main Hospital of S. M. 
Nuova, Florence, Italy. 

Piece work, necessitating higher speed, tends both in itself and together 
with the fatigue that ensues to favor the occurrence of labor accidents. . . 

We should see to it . . . that, above all, piece work should be con- 
demned, preference being given to time work, the honesty of the worker 
and the consciousness of his own labor capacity regulating the speed of 
work. (Pages 593-594.) 
4* 



50 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



CANADA Report of the Inspectors of Factories for the Province oj Ontario, Canada, 
1898. Toronto, 1899. 

In almost every industry the working day is ten hours. The system of 
piece work is becoming more generally adopted. The small pay given by 
the hundred or thousand, according to the different industries, stimulates 
the eagerness of the workers to the highest possible pitch. I have seen 
girls working so rapidly that I have asked myself the question, how long 
their nervous systems could resist the strain of the excessive fatigue result- 
ing therefrom. A shorter working day for this class of operatives seems 
an imperative necessity. (Page 31.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, Industries and Commerce. 
1908. 



1907- 



. . . The work that is done by women in so many departments of 
industry is "piece" work, where the nervous strain is at its highest tension. 

When, by reason of skill or deftness, or a longer sustained energy, a 
girl is able to do a maximum amount of work, she is said to "set the pace," 
and she becomes a "pace maker" for the others. Those less skilled or 
less deft, or who for any reason are unable to keep up with the leader, are 
striving with every nerve to earn as much as is possible, and this great 
demand upon nervous energy entails a rapid decay of nervous force. 
(Page 244.) 



Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. 
Irene Osgood, Special Agent. 

Organized workmen usually object to the piece-work system. It so 
frequently leads to "speeding up." And the rate per piece is often cut 
down until only the fastest workmen are able to secure anything like a 
living wage. Those less skilled and less dexterous are thus made to suffer 
from the ambition or greed of a few involuntary pace-makers who work 
themselves out in a short time for the sake of temporarily earning higher 
wages. (Page 1053.) 

The girls have complained, too, of being cut when they began to earn 
high wages. This was substantiated by a superintendent, who remarked: 
"Oh, if they get to earning too much they know what they will get," 
contending that a general level of wages must be maintained. This would 
mean, then, that the average worker practically determined the amount 



THE NEW STRAIN IN MANUFACTURE: PIECE WORK 5 1 

one could earn, and any exertion beyond this only reacted upon all in a united 
general cut of the piece rate. Employers quite generally admit this ^"^^"^^^ 
situation. Men meet it by organization and by attempting to regulate 
their employment by agreements with the employer. 

But, paradoxical as it may seem, stimulation to greater speed is fre- 
quently furnished in the opposite way. Another superintendent insisted 
that cutting the rate was the surest way to get more work done. He 
argued that when workers fmd their wages decreasing from a customary 
sum they naturally try to get back to the old standard by extra work. 
Thus they are caught between the upper and the nether millstones. The 
possibility of a cut is ever-present. If they work unusually hard and earn 
higher wages, they face a cut in rates. If they do not turn out enough 
work to satisfy the superintendent, a cut is made anyhow to spur them on 
to higher exertions. They are annoyed and bewildered and uncommonly 
helpless. (Page 1054.) 

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-earners in the United 
States. Vol. III. Glass Industry. Senate Document 645. 61st 
Congress, 2nd Session, 1911. 

In few industries, however, has there been such . . . highly developed 
methods for securing this result (speed) as in the electric lamp industry. . . 

These methods are four in number: First, the establishment of a 
minimum output, below which the employees dare not fall for fear of 
discharge. At the time of this investigation a tabulation of the output of 
all employees for a period of six weeks had just been completed in one 
establishment as a basis on which to establish minimum standards in all 
occupations. The fact that this system is not in general use, however, 
seems to indicate that it is of no great efficacy. Second, the payment of 
higher piece rates for increased production. 

In one of the factories, for example, the rates paid for "gem" mounting 
are as follows: 

Per 1,000 

Output under 900 per day ^1.03 

Output 900 to 1,000 per day 1.07 

Output 1,000 to 1,100 per day 1.12 

Output 1,100 and over per day 1.17 

In the case of the highest net output, 1,200, the difference to the opera- 
tor between being paid at the lowest rate and highest is the difference 
between $1.24 and $1.40, or 16 cents per day — that is, more than 10 per 
cent of the total wages. Third, a method very similar to that just cited, 



52 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED that of giving bonuses for all production above a certain standard. This 

STATES 

method is likewise widely used. The fourth and last of these methods is 
perhaps the most interesting. When an entirely new process is intro- 
duced or there is some one occupation the output of which has fallen below 
normal, one of the most skilled and willing workers is made the "leader" 
of a group. She acts as a pacemaker, and is urged to her best efforts to 
increase both her own production and that of her group by being paid 5 
per cent more than the average of the entire group. In such a case the 
use of bonuses or graded piece rates is ordinarily added in order to urge 
the individual workers to their highest speed. After this system has been 
in vogue for a short time and the girls have become accustomed to work- 
ing at their maximum eificiency, the "leader" is removed, the bonuses 
discarded, and according to the testimony of many of the girls, the piece 
rate is cut to such a point that the average wage level is as it was when the 
employees were producing much less. By this means the production is 
said in several cases to have been doubled within a short time. (Pages 
479-80.) 

... In 1890, from information furnished by a bulletin of the New 
Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries, the average hourly 
output of carbons mounted by hand was 90, whereas now, on identically 
the same work done by the very same methods, the average hourly pro- 
duction has risen to 125, an increase of approximately 40 per cent. (Pages 
178-179.) 



B. The Nature and Effects of Fatigue 

(1) General Medical Views of Fatigue 

The fundamental need of limiting excessive working 
hours for women is based on their physiological organiza- 
tion. For medical science has demonstrated that while 
fatigue is a normal phenomenon — the natural result of 
bodily and mental exertion, excessive fatigue or exhaus- 
tion is abnormal — the result of over-exertion or work pur- 
sued beyond the capacities of the organism. 

Two processes are continually carried on in the liv- 
ing body: assimilation or building up; disassimilation or 
breaking down material into simpler chemical form, ulti- 
mately expelled as waste products. These wastes are 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 53 

poisonous impurities arising from the chemical processes of 
cellular life. They circulate in the blood, poisoning brain 
and nervous system, muscles, glands, and other organs until 
normally removed by the oxygen of the blood, by the liver 
or kidneys. 

When these waste products accumulate in the blood, 
fatigue ensues. When they exceed their physiological or 
normal amount, exhaustion results and health is impaired. 
After excessive labor there is also a consumption of energy- 
yielding material, essential for activity. The processes of 
disassimilation are in excess of those of assimilation. 



Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of great 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on Britain 
the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

Fatigue or tiredness is a sensation, the outcome of a particular state of 
the nervous system, the result of work carried beyond the capabilities of 
the organism. In ordinary physiological activity exhaustion is never 
attained, for fatigue is the warning signal. In each of us there is a cer- 
tain amount of reserve force which allows our muscles and nerves to be 
overtaxed at times without injurious consequences. The increased func- 
tional activity is met by a corresponding improved nutrition, whereby 
recovery is secured. Life involves change of structure. The waste 
products added to the blood act upon the nerve endings in muscle and 
upon the gray matter of the brain, and create a sense of fatigue. Although 
the sensation of tiredness is referred by us to the overworked muscles, 
the location of the cause is less in the peripheral than in the central nervous 
system. On the one hand waste products act upon the muscles, diminish 
their contractibility and render them less responsive to nerve stimuli; 
and on the other hand they poison the large nerve cells in the gray matter 
of the brain, render them less receptive of sensory stimuli, and in this way 
reduce their power of emitting volitional impulses. There is, therefore, 
in fatigue an element that is mental as well as physical. 

After rest and sleep the sensation of fatigue wears off, we rise invigor- 
ated and strengthened for work. During repose structure is being rebuilt 
and waste products are eliminated. 



54 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



The proof that the circulation of waste products in the blood is a cause 
of fatigue is demonstrated by taking some of the blood of a fatigued animal 
and injecting it into a healthy one, when in the latter the physical signs of 
fatigue gradually appear. (Pages 6-7.) 



GERMANY Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 
1903. Vol. V, Sec. IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des meth- 
odes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans 
les diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences 
physiologiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel ou tel mode d' organisation du travail ? [To what extent may 
fatigue, its forms and degrees in different occupations he studied by 
physiological methods ? IVhat arguments can physiological or medical 
sciences bring to bear in favor of various modes of industrial organisa- 
tion ?] Dr. ZuNTZ, University of Berlin. Brussels, 1903. 

Fatigue, resulting from various occupations, which marks the limits of 
the workingman's capacity or, if disregarded, endangers his health, is 
very variable in its aspects, according to the organs especially affected. 

We may first of all diiferentiate between fatigue of the motor apparatus 
and fatigue of the nervous apparatus. 

The first group may be again subdivided into two divisions: first, the 
general muscular weariness resulting from heavy work; second, the 
fatigue of certain local groups of muscles which have been overstrained. 

In fatigue of the nervous apparatus we distinguish between fatigue of 
the special organs of sense, and fatigue of the central nervous system. 
(Page 1.) 



H andwbrterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of Po- 
litical Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle-; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. 
LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeitsieit. Hours of Work. 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

Conclusions from the physiological and psychological investigations 
into fatigue. 

Physiologically considered, human labor represents a transformation 
of the potential energy of oxygen and food materials. When assimilated, 
they are transformed into mental and physical energy, and, in so far as 
this is utilized for industrial purposes, we have work in the ordinary sense. 
Every piece of work, then, means expenditure of energy. . . . 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 55 

Products of tissue change are created (after fatigue), especially car- Germany 
bonic acid and other acids which have a poisonous and paralyzing action. 
Fatigue consists essentially in this — that waste products are created in 
the muscles more rapidly than they can be eliminated by the blood current 
and excretory organs. (Pages 1214-1215.) 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarheit. [Fatigue 
Resulting from Occupation] Dr. E. Roth. Berlin, Hirschwald, 
1908. 

Every muscular contraction increases the consumption of oxygen. 
This greater demand for oxygen is largely met by the correspondingly 
increased rapidity of the circulation. The increased drain made by the 
tissues upon the supply of oxygen may be fully compensated for by the 
more rapid circulation, though the kind of work being done may modify 
or interfere with this balance. . . . 

Accordingly, as a greater amount of oxygen is consumed, a correspond- 
ingly greater amount of carbonic acid gas is produced, so that the relative 
proportion remains the same during work as during rest. . . . Only 
when work becomes overwork, or when the needed oxygen is not supplied 
to the tissues, is the excretion of carbonic acid gas greater than the intake 
of oxygen; in this case the respiratory coefficient fluctuates. (Page 595.) 

The well-known experiments of Ranke and Mosso have proved that 
the products of fatigue circulate in the blood. . . . From the experi- 
ments of Ranke we know that, among these fatigue products, acids play 
a prominent part, whilst those of Kronecker show that blood containing a 
high percentage of oxygen is of far superior restorative power for muscular 
fibre than an ordinary supply. The experiments of Fletcher likewise 
suggest that the beneficial effect of oxygen on fatigued muscle arises from 
the rapid oxidation of readily combustible fatigue products in the tissues. 
. . . (Pages 595-596.) 

It has been shown by Mosso that the blood of fatigued animals is 
poisonous, and Kraus has stated that the lack of energy in the motions of 
fatigued animals is due primarily to the toxic products of disassimilation 
(waste materials) and that fatigue is thus a form of auto-intoxication. 
(Page 597.) 

The more gradually the metabolic processes go on, the more slowly 
does fatigue develop, for the fatigue products are then excreted as rapidly 
as the assimilation of nutritive material takes place, if not more rapidly. 
On the other hand, fatigue appears more quickly when waste products 



56 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



are created in the tissues more rapidly than they are excreted, no matter 
whether this is the result of delayed excretion or of accelerated production 
of waste material. The latter condition may be demonstrated, as an 
example, by the action of extreme heat, with the resultant sweating fol- 
lowed by languor; the former in the absence of sufficient oxygen. (Page 
605.) 



Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor oj Physiology, University of Turin. 1896. 
Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

Fatigue is a chemical process. At the end of the eighteenth century 
Lavoisier, in a memorable series of chemical analyses made jointly with 
Sequin, succeeded in demonstrating a fact of fundamental importance, 
namely, that muscular exertion increases the quantity of oxygen absorbed 
and of carbonic acid eliminated by man. 

The most demonstrative experiments in the analysis of fatigue are 
usually made upon cold-blooded animals, commonly on frogs. When 
the sciatic nerve is stimulated, we notice a contraction of the leg. The 
contraction, upon being repeated a great number of times, becomes more 
and more feeble. This diminution of energy is not to be attributed to 
the dissipation of some explosive substance, so to speak, in the muscle, 
that is to say, of the substance capable of giving rise to contractions. In 
fact the muscle will still continue to contract for a long time, but no stimu- 
lus will produce a contraction so strong as the first ones. The lack of 
energy in the movements of a weary man depends, as in the case of the 
frog, upon the fact that the muscles, during work, produce noxious sub- 
stances, which little by little interfere with contraction. 

The proof that we are not here dealing with a phenomenon of deficit 
is found in the fact that after the frog's leg has been fatigued by long 
exertion, we can restore its contracticity and render it capable of a new 
series of contractions, simply by washing it. Of course we do not wash 
the outer surface, but having found the artery which carries blood to the 
muscle, we pass through it water in place of blood. . . . Upon the passage 
of a current of this liquid through the muscle, the fatigue disappears, and 
the contractions return as vigorously as at the beginning. (Page 106.) 

The experiment upon frogs' muscles washed in saline solution shows 
that, in order to maintain muscular contracticity, there is no need of 
continual contact between the muscle fibre and the oxygen of the air 
through the medium of the blood. It is only necessary to eliminate the 
carbonic acid. (Page 112.) 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 57 

Two important facts . . . mark the beginning of our knowledge of italy 
the chemistry of muscle. 

In 1845 Helmholtz discovered that a muscle in repose contains only a 
small quantity of matter soluble in alcohol. Let 1 represent the quantity 
found. Upon taking an equal amount of muscle from a fatigued animal, 
he found there was a greater quantity of such matter, the amount being 
1.3. This is an experiment made, as the saying is, en bloc, by which one 
gets a glimpse of the changes which are produced in the muscles as the 
result of exercise. 

Another discovery of no less importance is that of Du Bois-Reymond, 
who found that the fatigued muscle is acid, while the muscle in repose is 
alkaline. (Page 116.) 

To demonstrate that muscles accumulate products which interfere 
with contraction, Ranke made an aqueous solution of muscle which has 
been exercised, and having injected this into a fresh muscle, found its 
power of exertion was diminished. After it had been washed, however, its 
energy returned. (Page 116.) 

It was a French chemist, Gautier, who isolated some of these sub- 
stances which are derived from the albuminoids of living cells. He 
gave them the name of leucomaines to indicate that they are chemical 
compounds arising from the decomposition of albumen. Here we have 
some very recent observations which open a new horizon in the study of 
the causes which produce disease. (Page 117.) 

I have now given a rapid glance at the toxic substances which are 
produced in the organism. They are not so much poisons as dross and 
impurities arising from the chemical processes of cellular life, and are 
normally burned up by the oxygen of the blood, destroyed in the liver, or 
excreted by the kidneys. If these waste products accumulate in the 
blood, we feel fatigued; when their amount passes the physiological 
limit, we become ill. 

Thus is our conception of fatigue widened. It is a process which, as 
we examine it, seems even to become more complicated. Meantime, we 
know that fatigue is not produced merely by the lack of certain substances 
which are consumed during exertion, but that it depends also in fact upon 
the presence of new substances due to decomposition within the organism. 
(Pages 118-119.) 

Observing that after a whole day's walk even the muscles of the arms 
are tired, I was struck by the thought that fatigue might alter the com- 
position in the blood; and so long ago as 1887 I found that the blood of a 
fatigued animal is toxic, for if injected into another animal, it produces the 
phenomena characteristic of fatigue. (Page 119.) 



5^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

* 

ITALY Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 

1903. Vol. V, Section IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des 
methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres 
dans les diver ses professions ? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences 
physiologiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel ou tel mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may 
fatigue resulting from occupation he estimated by physiological methods, 
and what arguments can medical and physiological science present in 
favor of special methods of industrial organisation?] Dr. Zaccaria 
Treves, University of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

The internal process which causes the phenomenon of fatigue is, 
according to the doctrine of Hering, and applied by Biedermann to muscu- 
lar tissue, a defective balance between the processes of assimilation and 
those of disassimilation. These two categories of phenomena are dis- 
played, in permanent fashion, side by side, in the living tissues, and this 
fact constitutes the very basis of all life. 

As long as these opposing processes balance one another there is no 
fatigue; but, as soon as this equilibrium, under the influence of any 
excitation whatever, is disturbed in favor of the processes of disassimila- 
tion, fatigue appears; the capacity of the tissues to function is weakened 
little by little; that is to say, under stimulation which does not vary in 
intensity, the degree of irritability of muscle diminishes. This conception 
of fatigue, which a thousand different biological phenomena confirm ex- 
perimentally, is so simple and so rigorously logical that it is impossible to 
pick a flaw in it. If we now consider that this degradation of tissue is not 
only quantitative but that it may, at a given moment, become qualita- 
tive and be accelerated by an accumulation of the products of disassimila- 
tion, we shall have included in the definition of fatigue, beside the two 
first factors, i. e., 1. Repetition of stimulus, and (2) excess of the processes 
of disassimilation over those of assimilation — the third factor, which is 
to-day for every physiologist indissolubly bound to the idea of fatigue — 
namely, auto-intoxication of tissue. (Page 2.) 

Professor Kraus . . . calls "measure of the constitution" that rela- 
tion existing between the maximum quantity of energy that the organism 
is capable of developing at a given moment and that part of this energy 
that is utilized in the form of external muscular work. . . . 

The respiratory changes are measured by the method of Zuntz and 
Geppert, and the results serve to establish the relation between the work 
and the energy employed. 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 59 

As a general rule, the higher degrees of fatigue are clearly shown in the ITALY 
chemics of respiration. 

The need of oxygen, corresponding to a given quantity of work, is so 
much the greater as the muscles are nearer to exhaustion. When the 
cardiac activity begins to be insufficient and the blood does not convey 
enough oxygen to the muscles, an abnormal augmentation in the value of 
the respiratory quotient becomes noticeable: that is to say, the organism 
has eliminated CO2 in excess, as compared with the amount of oxygen 
consumed. The number of calories developed by the organism during the 
execution of a given amount of external work may be deduced from the 
quantity of oxygen (in c.cm.) respired. (Page 29.) 

De la Fatigue et de son Influence Pathogenique. [Fatigue and its Patho- FRANCE 
genie Influence.] Dr. M. Carrieu, University of Montpellier. Paris, 
Bailliere et Fits, 1878, 

General fatigue, when carried to an extreme degree, takes the name of 
exhaustion; all the reserves of strength, accumulated in the organism by 
nutrition, are expended; all functions flag or cease, the organism, in- 
capable of manifesting activity, is overwhelmed with depression: the 
organs necessary to life alone continue with difficulty to perform their 
functions. A state of fatigue incompatible with life is seen in animals 
that have been overdriven or pursued: thus a stag after along and des- 
perate chase has been known to drop dead, though unwounded. The body 
becomes rigid immediately and putrefaction comes on rapidly. (Pages 
6-7.) 

There are indeed individuals who are always under the influence of 
fatigue. This subnormal condition is usually linked with anaemia, and 
is caused by some one of the many pathogenic conditions of this malady 
(anaemia). (Page 8.) 

Etude sur V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generate 
de VAdulte. [Study of the Effect of the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

Gautier has shown that, among the products of muscular exertion in 
the tissues, alkaloidal leucomaines are formed whose toxicity is not 
inferior to those poisons produced in putrefied meat which are well known 
as ptomaines. (Page 31.) 

According to Herzen, fatigue is produced first in the motor centres, 
less so or not as evidently in the terminal filaments of the motor nerves. 



6o 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



and to a certain still inferior degree throughout the body. Then there 
occur in the muscular fibre those nutritive changes due to the combustion 
which accompanies contractions. These chemical changes profoundly 
alter the structure of the tissues at whose expense they have taken place, 
and from this alteration the products of combustion, of disassimilation, 
appear in the muscles. (Page 33.) 

Acute overstrain is then a poisoning by products appearing in the 
course of chemical transformation of muscular tissues. (Page 34.) 

The toxicity of urine is considerably augmented after muscular effort 
pushed to the degree of fatigue, even if the diet is exclusively of milk. 

According to Tissie, urine, after excessive muscular exertion, has a toxic 
power greater than the co-efficient of that of acute infectious fevers. 
(Page 37.) 

M. Arloing has demonstrated that the toxicity of sweat is almost nil 
when it is produced by a hot bath, etc., but that it is very considerable 
during violent muscular exertion. (Page 37.) Sub-acute overstrain, 
says Lagrange, is due to the impregnation of the organism with the waste 
materials of activity. It is found among persons whose bodies have been 
subjected to sustained labor or to repeated fatigue without having had 
sufficient periods of rest. (Page 43.) 



La Protection Legale des Travailleurs. [Legal Protection for Working 
People.] Discussions of the French Section of the International As- 
sociation for Labor Legislation in 1905 and 1906. Paris, Alcan, 1907. 

Mme. Moll-Weiss: 

... It has been shown absolutely beyond question that, when work 
of a certain duration of time is under consideration, — say, for example, 
eight or ten hours, — the effectiveness of any worker is less at the end of 
five hours than previous to that time, because there is an accumulation of 
waste products in the organism, the remains of incomplete combustion, 
resultant upon work. It has been commonly agreed upon to call this 
fatigue. (Page 181.) 



The Mental Symptoms of Fatigue. {Reprinted from the Transactions of the 
New York State Medical Association.) Edward Cowles, M.D., 
Medical Superintendent of the McLean Hospital, Somerville, Mass. 
New York, Fless and Ridge, 1893. 

The bodily conditions of fatigue should first be considered as far as 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 6l 

we can know them, and mav be studied in their two forms or degrees: united 

STATES 

(1) normal fatigue, or the condition of wholesome tire from daily physio- 
logical use; and (2) pathological fatigue, or the condition of persistent 
"impoverishment of nervous tissue in excess of repair," according to 
Beard, which constitutes nervous exhaustion or neurasthenia. The 
mental symptoms are to be studied in their close and direct correspond- 
ence with these conditions of fatigue. 

The effects of fatigue are produced by sufficiently continued exercise 
in the physiological use of any functions, muscular or nervous. The 
sense of fatigue is complex, and may have a central or peripheral source, or 
both together. In muscular tissue, the condition of fatigue depends upon 
the physiological fact that muscular contraction is in some way or other 
the result of a chemical change whereby the latent energy is set free and 
expended in the mechanical work, with also the setting free of heat. The 
resultant chemical products are toxic, and obstructive of muscular func- 
tion unless they are duly washed away in the blood current; and time 
must be given in rest and sleep for this process, as well as for nutrition and 
repair. These toxic products being variously irritant or benumbing, 
doubtless thus affect the sensory apparatus through which fatigue is felt. 
It is evident from this that the condition of muscular fatigue has always a 
dual character — there are direct expenditure of energy, requiring repair, 
and a toxic element that may be obstructive of function, both that of 
discharging energy and of taking up nutrition. 

In nervous substance, the nature of nerve force being unknown, the 
effects of the passage of a nervous impulse along nerve-fibres are not 
demonstrable as attended by chemical changes, or loss of normal irri- 
tability as a manifestation of fatigue. But in the central nervous organs 
it is found that their function is dependent on an adequate supply of 
oxygen, and this implies that "in nervous, as in muscular substance, a 
metabolism, mainly of an oxidative character, is the real cause of the 
development of energy." In fact we do not doubt that toxic waste prod- 
ucts attend upon central nervous activity, and this accords with the 
biological theory that all function is due to chemical changes taking place 
within the organism, and that the functional activity of a specialized tissue 
depends upon the changes in its individual cells. The dual character of all 
conditions of primary fatigue is evident, as is also the importance of recog- 
nizing the effects of the self-produced poisonous substances that regularly 
result from the chemical changes in tissue metabolism within the body, 
as we are taught by the brilliant revelations of modern chemical physiol- 
ogy and pathology. (Pages 5-6.) 



62 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting oj the American Institute of Instruction. The 
Relation of Fatigue to Social and Educational Progress. Henry S. 
Baker, Ph.D. Boston, 1895. 

It is a fact not questioned, that every movement of a muscle and every 
mental act, whether it be thinking, feeling, remembering, or the passive 
reception of impressions through the senses, is accompanied by some 
chemical change in the muscular or nervous tissue or both. This change 
may be called a "wearing out," an oxidation or metabolism, and the worn 
out material or ashes, as it were, is thrown into the blood, from which it 
is removed by the various organs of depuration as the kidneys and liver. 
It is important to note that this debris of nerve and muscle is decidedly 
toxic to the various organs and especially so to the brain. (Page ?>?>.) 

Any movement of the mind or body, because it introduces some of the 
above materials (leucine, creatine, leukomaines, and lactic or sarco-lactic 
acid, tyrosin, and a substance with effects like ptomaines) into the blood, 
and because it removes by oxidation a portion of the brain always, and, 
when a muscle is moved, of the muscular tissue, also produces fatigue. 
Three conditions always exist: 1. Deleterious material in the blood. 
2. A changed, abnormal condition of the brain cells. ... 3. There is 
general fatigue of the entire body, caused by toxic materials in the blood. 
... 4. There sometimes exists also a local accumulation of waste prod- 
ucts in the tissue which produced them, as a muscle, and this is the case 
when the labor is rapid or violent. Since the brain is the motive power, 
all fatigue is brain fatigue; that is, there can be no fatigue in which the 
brain does not share, locally in some centre. In all cases, then, there is 
local fatigue of brain or muscle, or both. When these conditions exist to 
a small extent the fatigue is normal, healthful, and the recovery takes 
place quickly. When they are carried to a great extent the system, as a 
whole, is weakened and permanently injured in one or more organs or 
tissues. (Pages 34-35.) 

The waste products in the blood not only poison tissues and glands 
by their presence, but prevent the oxygen of the blood from performing 
its functions. When a man or animal falls dead from over-exertion, it is be- 
cause he is poisoned to death by his own waste products, which were formed 
faster than they could be eliminated. Fire horses last but a few years, be- 
cause at every run the above conditions exist to a great extent. (Page 35.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

A French physician . . . concludes that the abnormal sickness and 
mortality among working people is due not simply to poisonous or noxious 



NATURE AND EFFECTS OF FATIGUE 63 

substances in the materials of work, but also to fatigue, which affects the united 
nerves. He describes as follows the effects of long hours of work: (1) 
Fatigue resulting from prolonged physical effort is a phenomenon of self- 
poisoning produced by the substances destroyed within the body. (2) 
It is altogether probable that in mental effort the phenomena of fatigue 
likewise proceed from the products of decomposition which have been 
thrown into the circulation. (3) In physical fatigue, resulting from ex- 
cessively prolonged manual labor, there appear not only the phenomena 
of peripheral fatigue localized in the muscles and ends of nerves, but also 
the same phenomena in the nerve centres. Hence, mental effort after 
physical labor, or vice versa, bodily exercise after long mental effort cannot 
serve as rest; the human organism then demands a certain period of ab- 
solute rest. (4) Bodily exercises set the circulation strongly in motion, 
raise the blood pressure and sensibly increase the number of heart beats. 
If muscular efforts are excessive or continued long they may in due time 
produce functional and organic alterations both in the heart and in the 
blood vessels. Hypertrophy and enlargement of the heart are the most 
usual consequences. (5) It is very probable that excessive and prolonged 
physical labor retards the circulation of the kidneys, and in some degree 
causes anaemia of the kidneys. ... (7) The bodily development of the 
factory operative remains inferior to that found in other social classes. 
(Pages 65-66.) 

The Harvey Lectures, 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906.* 

It is customary to seek the causes of the physical phenomena of fatigue 
in the chemical changes undergone by the active living substance. . . . 
In all tissues during activity substances of value to the organism are 
broken down and substances of little or no value are formed. . . . (Page 
180.) It is now customary to recognize three distinct metabolic products 
as fatiguing, namely, sarcolactic acid, mono-potassium phosphate, and 
carbon dioxid, all of which are acid in reaction. . . . (Page 183.) The 
organism produces normally in the course of its activity a number of acid 
substances which tend to inhibit further activity. Fatigue is due in 
great measure to the depressant action of these toxic products of meta- 
bolism on the body tissues, particularly on the muscular system, and the 
sensation of fatigue is in large part the psychic manifestation of the recog- 

* See also by the same author: Physical Exercise from the Standpoint of 
Physiology. Science N. S. Vol. xxix. Apr. 2, 1909, pages 521-527. The Na- 
ture of Fatigue. Popular Science Monthly, February, 1910. 



64 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



nition of this depressant action. (Page 185.) The action of fatigue 
substances is not confined to the tissues in which they arise. The ex- 
cessive activity of one tissue is capable of causing fatigue to appear in 
others. . . . Thus localized activity is capable of producing general 
fatigue, a fact which is often overlooked in our daily life. The explanation 
of this is aflforded by Mosso's well-known experiment: A dog was fatigued 
by long-continued running; his blood was then transfused into the vessels 
of a second dog, from which an equivalent amount of blood had been with- 
drawn, with the result that the second dog exhibited the usual phenomena 
of fatigue. The blood had evidently become charged with the fatigue 
substances produced in the muscles, and thus they were able to reach all 
parts of the body. (Pages 188-189.) 



(2) The Toxin of Fatigue 

The need of limiting excessive working hours for women 
is further emphasized by recent medical research which 
claims that fatigue is due not only to actual poisoning, but 
to a specific poison or toxin of fatigue, analogous in chemical 
and physical nature to other bacterial toxins such as the 
diphtheria toxin. This theory claims that when artificially 
injected into animals in large amounts the fatigue toxin 
causes death. 



great 

BRITAIN 



Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on 
the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

Weichardt, in 1904, advanced the theory that the cause of fatigue is a 
toxin generated in the overtaxed organism, and that the ravages of the 
toxin, like the poison of diphtheria, can be met by the introduction of an 
anti-toxin into the body. Wolff-Eisner (Centralb. f. Bakteriol. bd. XI, 
1906, page 634) is of the opinion that during athletic training there is 
produced an immunity to the toxin of fatigue, whereby the trained athlete 
becomes capable of accomplishing more than the untrained man, and 
without experiencing the sensation of fatigue. It is common knowledge 
that men who are doing hard, physical toil regularly have not the sense of 
tiredness felt by men who are new to the work, and we explain this by 



THE TOXIN OF FATIGUE 65 

saying that the latter are not trained. Wolflf-Eisner throws new h'ght great 

• BRITAIN 

upon the subject, having obtained a fatigue toxin from overworked ani- 
mals; he injected small doses of the poison into other animals and pro- 
duced in them symptoms of fatigue, drowsiness, and a lessening of activ- 
ity. Large doses caused death, but if very minute doses were injected 
for a lengthened period there was established in the animals a genuine 
immunity to fatigue. The toxin is not found in the blood but in the 
muscles, whereas the anti-toxin is only present in the blood. (Pages 6-7.) 

CentralUatt filr Bakteriologie, Bd. XL, AU. I; Heft 5; 1906. Uber Er- GERMANY 
mudungs- und Reduktionstoxine. [The Toxin of Fatigue.] Dr. Alfred 
Wolff-Eisner, Charlottenhurg. Berlin, 1906. 

In the early part of 1904 Weichardt propounded his theory that fatigue 
was produced by a toxin the composition of which was fully analogous to 
such previously well-known toxins as ricin, abrin, diphtheria and tetanus 
toxins, the leading characteristic of which was also to be found in it, in 
that injections of the fatigue toxin produced an anti-toxin which neu- 
tralized the effects of the toxin in vivo and in vitro. This theory was at 
first striking through its novelty, as the view had been quite generally 
held, among physiologists, that fatigue was produced by chemically analyz- 
able products of metabolism, especially lactic and other acids. And yet 
there were numerous well-known facts which might have given rise to 
fresh inquiries into the nature of fatigue products. 

It was well known that suitable "training" had an astonishing effect, 
and every one knew, also, that expert — that is, trained — professional 
bicyclists, gymnasts, etc., could easily accomplish achievements which 
would have resulted in death after a comparatively short time, for raw 
recruits or untrained men. It seemed impossible to explain these un- 
doubted facts simply on the ground that the blood supply and its circu- 
lation were better in trained muscles. . . . There was much to support 
the thesis that the trained man benefited by an anti-toxin, which neutral- 
ized the fatigue poison at the moment when it was produced. From this 
point of view it also became clear why for an efficient training it is essen- 
tial not only to develop the muscles but also to observe a special daily 
regimen. 

It was to be expected that this teaching of the actions of poisons in 
fatigue would meet great opposition in many circles of physiological 
specialists, the more so as the whole doctrine of toxins and immunity, 
well founded though it was, was still regarded in these circles as a dubious 
acquisition. It was consequently necessary to prove that fatigue, when 
5* . ' 



66 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY pushed beyond normal circumstances, produced an accumulation of poison 
which was capable of causing death. 

An experimental demonstration to prove that fatigue had such capacity 
naturally encountered extraordinary diificulties. In instances where men 
might be subjected to extraordinary physical exertion, circumstances 
would make scientific observation impossible. Physiology had already 
an apparatus for testing dogs while running; but running is not a suf- 
ficiently exhausting exertion for large dogs to make it possible to demon- 
strate the anti-toxin. Weichardt therefore invented a modification of 
this apparatus by which, while standing on a rough surface, large dogs 
were continuously pulled backward. Their resistance to this and their 
efforts to go forward resulted in exertions sufficient to produce an accumu- 
lation of fatigue products. (This being obtained and injected into small 
and rapidly moving animals, such as mice, the influence of the fatigue- 
producing toxin was fully demonstrated.) 

After Weichardt has succeeded in demonstrating the clinical "sympto- 
mo-complex" of forced fatigue, his next task was to demonstrate the 
fatigue material itself. This material, he proved, is not found in the 
blood current, as the first supposition might be. The blood functions 
solely as a carrier of the anti-toxin, and in the blood of highly overfatigued 
dogs no fatigue poison was present. The poison was demonstrated in the 
muscles, — a discovery that helps to explain the lifelong activity of the 
cardiac muscle, for the heart, of all muscles, has the richest blood supply, 
and the blood continually frees the cardiac muscle from its fatigue ma- 
terial. (Pages 634-635.) 

The effects of the toxin on animals are as follows: in small doses it 
produces weariness and craving for sleep, whose demonstration is made 
evident by the length of time in which the animals will remain in unusual 
positions, as, for instance, a mouse placed upon its back will remain so for 
some time. (Page 638.) 

In large doses it causes the death of animals, after a persistent fall of 
temperature, that is, with all the symptoms analogous to those of extreme 
fatigue. 

The injection of the toxin produces in the large animals experimented 
on a true anti-toxic immunity. (Page 638.) 

From all these researches into the nature of albuminous material, 
poisons, etc., it is evident that fresh emphasis must be laid upon the im- 
portance to the animal and human organism of adequate aeration with 
oxygen, such as is accomplished by the functioning of healthy lungs. 
Here we must remember the clinical experiences with human beings, — 
that in all of those whose supply of oxygen is interfered with, whether it 



TOXIN OF FATIGUE 67 

be by disease of the lungs or by a deficiency of hemoglobin arising from GERMANY 
anaemia, — the body is extremely susceptible to fatigue, and it will be seen 
that it is far more important to bring the natural supply of oxygen for the 
body to its normal adequacy, than it is to administer an artificial anti- 
toxin to fatigue. In this connection it may be recalled how often it is 
possible by deep inhalations of fresh air to dispel the symptoms of accumu- 
lating fatigue toxin. The effect of bad air, as leading to fatigue, is also 
explained by the insufficient oxidation. (Page 643.) 

I would define "training" as follows: 

As practice of muscle groups in harmonious associated activity (syner- 
gesis) without detriment to strength; as modification of respiration in the 
sense of increased aeration with oxygen for the repair of the blood and 
tissues and for the oxidation of fatigue products created by work; finally, 
as heightened production of the anti-toxin of fatigue, by which a surplus 
of unoxidized fatigue toxin in the blood may be neutralized and so a 
working capacity made possible which would, for the untrained, result in 
steadily lowered temperature and death. (Page 644.) 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
Sept., 1907, Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarheit. [Fa- 
tigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, Hirsch- 
wald, 1908. 

Weichardt succeeded in obtaining a toxin from the extract of the 
muscles of fatigued guinea pigs, which he injected into the peritoneal 
cavity of a mouse, with the result that it was thrown into the same con- 
dition of extreme fatigue that follows from forced exertion. With re- 
peated intravenous injections of large animals with the fatigue poison, a 
specific anti-toxin was produced, with which he conducted active and 
passive immunization experiments, proving successfully that under its 
influence the muscles of the animals experimented on displayed a lesser 
degree of fatigue than under ordinary conditions. The fatigue toxin does 
not pass through dead membranes by dialysis, but is taken up by the living 
cells of the stomach. 

As has been demonstrated by experiments with animals, the toxin 
exhibits a composite character, as do other well-known poisons (tuber- 
culin; snakepoison). 

Weichardt subsequently succeeded in preparing the toxin artificially, 
and in augmenting the endurance capacity of animals under experiment 
by administering small doses to them; he also demonstrated the presence 
of the fatigue poison in the excretions of animals and human beings. 



68 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Weichardt is of the opinion that this proteid-like product of fatigue 

characterized by poisonous qualities is extremely widely distributed both 
in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. (Page 597.) 

The experiments of Zuntz and Schumberg as well as others show that 
the expenditure of strength, or, in other words, the cost in energy, for a 
given work-unit, diminishes with increased practice. The skilled worker 
economizes his strength more than the unskilled. According to Weichardt, 
the value of "training" so-called consists not only in bringing about an 
actual increase in tissue elements, but also in producing a bio-chemical 
substance of marked characteristics, the anti-toxin of fatigue, which is 
produced by the immunizing action during "training" of the small 
amounts of toxic material developed in the course of repeated exertions. 
(Page 608.) 

Vierteljahresschrift fiir Offentliche Gesundheitspflege, XXXIX, 1907. 
Ermiidungs und Uberermiidungs Massmethoden. [Methods of esti- 
mating Fatigue and Overfatigue.] Dr. Wolfgang Weichardt, Er- 
langen. Braunschweig, Vieveg, 1907. 

I first sought for the toxin in the bodies of animals, and in those which 
had been excessively overfatigued I found it, not in the blood, but in the 
juices extracted from their muscular tissues. When this (by various proc- 
esses described) was freed from indifferent albumins and then injected 
into animals, it produced symptoms of excessive fatigue and, in large 
doses, killed them. When repeated injections of this purified extract 
were administered to horses, the specific, neutralizing agent — the antidote 
for the fatigue poison — appeared in the blood serum of the horses. Both 
also, the toxin and its antidote, may be produced, as I was later able to 
state, by the separation of the albumin molecules by means of physical 
and chemical processes. 

I have demonstrated isolating both substances and have used them 
in an extensive series of experiments. All the typical signs of fatigue, up 
to death from extreme fatigue, may be produced by the artificially pro- 
duced fatigue poison. On the other hand, the effect of the poison has 
been invariably successfully neutralized by the artificially produced anti- 
toxin. 

That fatigue toxin is of ordinary routine occurrence in the excreta and 
urine of human beings, shows that the production of poison takes place 
with ordinary, physiological fatigue; and that it does not follow that there 
must be a state of severe, pathological fatigue for the development of 
fatigue poison in the body. 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 69 

In every healthy body the process of supplying an increased amount of Germany 
the specific anti-toxin takes place as soon as moderate amounts of the 
fatigue poison appear. This is easily demonstrated by mice, with which, 
by means of a special apparatus, the Kymograph, one can obtain a curve 
illustrating this process. (Page 330.) 

The results of experimentation allow us to formulate the two following 
principles, taking into consideration the practical as well as the theoretical 
domain of the researches into fatigue and overfatigue. Small amounts of 
fatigue toxin bring about active immunization, which is later, after a 
certain time, expressed in heightened eificiency. 

Overdoses of toxin, on the other hand, bring on a decrease of efficiency 
and may even produce death. 

If overdoses of toxin are met by corresponding amounts of anti-toxin 
a decrease of efficiency does not take place, but, instead, after a certain 
time, a notable increase in capacity is evident. (Pages 332-333.) 

The Harvey Lectures, 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. \^l^ 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906. 

Mention should here be made of the claim of Weichardt, working in 
Zuntz's laboratory in Berlin, to have isolated from fatigued muscles a 
true toxin, of a chemical and physical nature like bacterial toxins, which, 
when introduced in minute quantity into the body, is capable of giving 
rise to the phenomena of fatigue. Weichardt further claims to have ob- 
tained by the usual methods of the bacteriologists an antitoxin endowed 
with the power of neutralizing the fatiguing properties of the toxin. 
(Page 187.) 



(3) Nervous Fatigue 

The most serious injury to the health of working women 
from excessive hours of labor is due to the fact that over- 
exertion uses up nervous energy. For all industrial work, 
whether it involves muscular effort or not, requires the ex- 
penditure of nervous energy. Overlong working hours may 
therefore wholly exhaust nervous endurance. 

In the nerve cells energy is generated; nerve fibers are its 
carriers to the muscles. Fatigue of the nervous system is 
ascribed to the same double origin as muscle fatigue; accum- 



BELGIUM 



70 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ulation of toxic waste products, and consumption of sub- 
stances essential for activity. The poisonous waste products 
of fatigue act also upon nerve tissue. 

Since the central nervous system controls all the vital 
functions, unrepaired nervous fatigue is more fatal to the 
organism than the exhaustion of any organ or function. 

Royaume de Belgique. Conseil Superieur du Travail, 6^ Session, 1901- 
1902. T. I. Fasc. II. [Higher Council of Labor, 6th Session. 
1901-1902. Vol. I, Part II.] Note sur la Legislation relative au 
Repos Hehdomadaire. [JVeekly Rest Day.] Discussion by M. Denis, 
Member of Council. Brussels, 1902. 

In order to justify the intervention of the legislator the testimony of 
psychology must be added to that of the physiology of fatigue. We then 
learn that the consciousness of fatigue does not appear coincidently with 
the physiological phenomena of fatigue and the accumulation of the waste 
of combustion in our tissues. It comes on more slowly. "The workman 
who works," says M. Nitti, "does not perceive the oncoming of fatigue 
until it has reached a certain degree of intensity. This is the chief reason 
why society, desirous of preventing a wasteful expenditure of energy, 
must of necessity resort to a legal limitation of labor." And we under- 
stand the import of these words when we read in Mosso: 

"Fatigue, which we may regard as a sort of poisoning, can alter the 
composition of the blood and the conditions of life without our experienc- 
ing any other feelings than a vague sensation of weakness." (Page 174.) 

The labor contract made by one individual with another may thus be 
vitiated by a short of permanent error or illusion of the worker, and the 
principle of social intervention is based on the psycho-physiological con- 
stitution of his being. 

The collective consciousness of injury must supplement the individual 
consciousness. (Page 175.) 

Les Projets de Limitation de la Duree du Travail des Adultes en Belgique. 
[Proposals regarding Limitation of Hours of Work for Adults in Bel- 
gium.] Hector Denis. No. X. of the publications of the Belgian 
Section of the International Association for Labor Legislation. Liege, 
Benard, 1908. 

Researches into the psychology of work prove that the consciousness 
of fatigue is only attained when a really grave state of overfatigue has 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 7I 

been reached. This alone would justify the intervention of the law. . . . Belgium 
The classic idea was that unrestricted individual liberty best secured 
individual interests . . . but now it is shown that, in what is a most 
imperative interest of the working man, namely, conservation of his 
strength, he is only enlightened imperfectly and tardily by consciousness; 
what, then, must be the result of all that complicated train of motives 
which, as Treves has pointed out, may impel the working man to risk 
overwork and overstrain? (Pages 10-11.) 

Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, ITALY 
1903. Vol. V, Section IV. Dans quelle me sure peut-on, par des 
methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres 
dans les diverses professions ? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences ' 
physiologiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel ou tel mode d' organisation du travail ? [To what extent may fatigue 
resulting from occupation he estimated by physiological methods, and 
what arguments can medical and physiological science present that will 
influence favorably certain methods of industrial organiiation ?] Dr. 
Zaccaria Treves, University of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

The solution of the problem (of nerve fatigue in muscular work) has 
a very practical importance, because the working man, especially when he 
works with machinery, is most frequently subjected to a mechanical 
rhythm and uniform intensity, and his labor continues regularly for hours. 
In reality, man is provided, by his neuro-muscular apparatus and the systems 
of levers dependent on it, with a mechanism capable of making a lengthy re- 
sistance either to the direct exhaustion of muscle, or to the action of ponogetic 
substance (waste materials derived from the brain or nerve tissues); so 
that he is capable of doing intense work, under a permanent routine, and yet 
of being unaware of the gradual appearance of fatigue, which, however, re- 
veals itself by other symptoms. (Page 5.) 

By the effect of training, which, as we know, enables the minimum 
maximal weight (technical ergographic term, meaning minimum of 
effort with maximum result of work accomplished) to be doubled, in 
experiments, the individual will be able to endure more intensive work as 
a regular thing; but it will be necessary for him to expend, with every 
contraction, a greater amount of nervous energy, so that his total store of 
disposable nervous energy will be reduced to a minimum. 

Now, according to my experiments, it has not been found that training 
has as favorable an effect upon nervous energy as upon muscular strength. 
The only evident advantage that training shows in the nervous function 



72 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY of voluntary motion is a more ready co-ordination of muscles and an ac- 

complishment of the purpose with a smaller number of muscles. 

This qualitative perfecting of motion has also, no doubt, the effect of 
conserving a certain amount of nervous energy. 

The well-trained athlete, then, can by practice lift heavy weights with 
increasing ease; but, when his muscles have attained their greatest 
strength, the nervous energy at his command will not have augmented 
proportionately with the work that his muscles are able to perform. 
The result is that in order to perform this work his nervous energy will 
be proportionately more expended. (Page 6.) 

This fact explains why muscular training cannot go beyond certain 
limits and why athletes are often broken down by the consequences of 
overexertion. 

And this fact also teaches us the practical necessity of preventing 
women, children, and even adult men from being subjected to toil, which, 
indeed, a gradual muscular training may make possible, but at the price 
of an excessive loss of nervous energy which betrays itself by no evident 
and immediate symptom, neither objective nor subjective. 

While the individual works, the reserves of disposable nervous energy 
in the neurones, which preside over muscles, diminish much more rapidly 
than the production of work, which may, indeed, proceed according to a 
regular pace. In spite of this diminution, if circumstances continually 
demand intense and constant work, the stimulus will continue to be sent 
to the muscle with the intensity necessary to accomplish the purpose. 
(Page 6.) 

Here we have an arrangement of things which is of inestimable value 
to man in the production of work: but this beneficent provision becomes 
injurious to the dynamic equilibrium of the organism as soon as it is 
irrationally employed. It is this that needs to be avoided in the practical 
organization of industry. (Page 7.) 

The dynamometer might serve for this purpose (examination of ap- 
proximate nervous energy of the individual) by calculating the product 
of medium strength exerted upon the dynamometer by the duration of the 
tetanic contraction. A dynamometric comparative test of different hours 
of work in different occupations, made upon a large number of individuals 
over a long period of time, might perhaps give us some satisfactory results 
and discover for us symptoms of fatigue that a superficial observation 
can neither perceive in the subjective condition of the individual nor by 
the quality or quantity of work executed. (Page 7.) 

Intelligence and will-power driving us on in intensive labor in order to 
attain the maximum useful result in a minimum of time, and our practi- 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 73 

cally inexhaustible muscles aiding in this, a state of things is established ITALY 
which involves formidable overstrain of those parts of the nervous system 
which act as the immediate regulators of our energies. ... I must con- 
clude from my experiments that the average energy of contraction does 
not increase in an appreciable extent as the result of practice: It would 
appear that a true training of the nervous motor function does not exist. 
(Page 24.) 

Industry has developed in an almost dizzy fashion, and the worker's 
tasks have been almost completely transformed, labor having become 
more intense and more monotonous. It is only by following the methods 
indicated previously that we shall be able to know exactly whether this 
state of things may, or may not, be a natural cause of physical and psychi- 
cal overstrain of working people. 

Such overstrain would constitute a danger with which our hygienic 
reviews have concerned themselves too little, and which is no less grave 
and menacing than overwork in the school, which in the past few years 
has become the favorite theme of sociologists and pedagogues as well as 
physiologists. 

And yet, when we consider the knowledge and the methods in the 
possession of physiology to-day for examining into the resistance of the 
human organism, the study of the fatigue of working men seems to offer 
the hygienist a better chance of arriving at a practical solution than that 
of the fatigue of the schoolboy. (Page 30.) 

The above (ergograph, modified ergograph, electric stimuli, sphygmo- 
graph, physical and laboratorical examination, psychic tests, ergostat, 
chemical experiments) are the most exact methods at the disposal of the 
physiologist for measuring the energetic value of the human organism, 
and these methods only can prove to the hygienist how a state of what we 
may call chronic fatigue may be a permanent cause of enfeeblement of 
the working man. (Page 30.) 

. . . The efficiency of the human organism depends rigidly on the 
stage of evolution and of the resistance of all higher faculties, both moral 
and intellectual. The workman's productivity depends on his ability 
to use his head as well as his hands. (Page 32.) 

Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologie, 1890. Physiologische AUheilung. 
Cher die Gesetie der Ermiidung. [The Laws of Fatigue.] Dr. Arnaldo 
Maggiora, University of Turin. Leipzig, 1890. 

I found, by experiments morning and evening, that the chief importance 
of sleep is for its effect on the nerve centres. With moderate exertion, 



74 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY such as the ordinary occupations of a day demand, the store of muscular 

energy is not exhausted, and the night's rest is therefore of minor effect 
upon the muscles, but the influence of sleep upon the nerve centres is far 
more definite. (Page 225.) 

Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin, 1896. 
Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

The nervous system is the sole source of energy; and although we 
must admit a certain amount of localization, this is not of such a nature 
as to prevent the neighboring organs feeting any loss through the great 
activity of any one organ. The exhaustion of energy is general; and all 
the magazines of energy can be drained by the exaggeration of any activity 
whatever of the organism. The conclusion to which we are led by my 
experiments is that there exists only one kind of fatigue, namely, nervous 
fatigue; this is the preponderating phenomenon, and muscular fatigue 
also is at bottom an exhaustion of the nervous system. (Page 243.) 

Cerebral fatigue diminishes the force of the muscles, and with the 
ergograph we measure this phenomenon with exactitude. The need of 
rest after intense brain work arises then from the fact that the nervous 
centres are exhausted and the muscles weakened. The feeling of dis- 
comfort and the prostration which characterize intellectual fatigue are 
due to the fact that the brain, which is already exhausted, has to send 
stronger stimuli to the muscles in order to make them contract. The 
exhaustion is twofold: central and peripheral. This explains why after 
brain fatigue one feels one's energy exhausted by the slightest movement, 
and why every obstacle which we have to overcome seems to have grown 
more serious. (Page 280.) 



GERMANY Berliner Klinische IVochenschrift, N'^ 5. Feb. 4, 1901. Ermiidung und 
Erholung. [Fatigue and Repair.] Prof. Max Verworn, Jena. 
Berlin, Hirschwald, 1901. 

There is an organ whose state of fatigue arouses our physiological and 
pathological interest to a far greater extent than does muscular fatigue, 
and this is the central nervous system. The central nervous system, as 
the dominating system of our bodies, which communicates to all other 
however important organs the impulses which promote or check their 
activities, must always share in the fatigue of single organs, such as the 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 75 

muscles, by reasons of this co-ordinating function and relation. But it Germany 
results, too, from the centralization of the control of all our vital functions 
there, that fatigue of the central nervous system has a far more decisive 
importance for the collective bodily activities than has the fatigue of a 
single group of organs such as the muscles. This is made most plainly 
evident by all the symptoms of pathological fatigue. (Page 127.) 

Grenifragen des Nerven und Seelenlehens. [Borderland Problems of Ner- 
vous and Psychic Life.] Edited by Loewenfeld and Kurella. 
Vol. 6. Cher die Geistige Arbeitskraft und ihre Hygiene. [On Mental 
Working Power and its Hygiene.] Dr. L. Loewenfeld, Wiesbaden, 
Bergmann, 1906. 

The nerve elements of the brain, like other nerve structures, are by no 
means capable of activity for unlimited time periods. After a certain 
duration of activity the nerve elements lose their responsiveness to stimu- 
lation, and fatigue results, or, under forced stimulation, complete ex- 
haustion follows, even though the store of energy accumulated in the 
chemical combinations of the nerve cells has not been used up. If we 
ask why nerve elements become incapable of exertion after long-continued 
work, though their disposable energy is not consumed, we find that we 
have here to do with the effect of a poisonous product, the toxic waste 
product of fatigue. The accumulation of this poison paralyzes the nerve 
substance. This is one of nature's protective measures. Through the 
paralyzing action of the poison the elasticity of the tissues is protected 
from overstrain, and a destruction of tissue substance, which cannot be 
compensated by rest and food, is prevented. (Page 13.) The hygiene 
of the mental working capacity in adults demands before all else an eco- 
nomic use of the same, that is, the avoidance of overexertion. The in- 
dividual's capital of available nerve force, whether that capital is large 
or small, must not be permanently decreased by the work executed. A 
disproportionate mental exertion may impair the nerve-capital in two 
ways : 

1. By necessitating a consumption of nerve elements which cannot be 
fully compensated for by the available nutrition and sleep, thus leading to 
a progressive diminution of strength. 

2. By accumulating poisonous waste products in the tissues, in excess 
of excretion. These wastes, as we have seen, by virtue of their poisonous 
properties, and their paralyzing action on nerve elements, lower the mental 
efficiency even more seriously than is the case when the chemical constitu- 
ents of the tissues are impoverished by insufficient nourishment. 



76 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

According to all evidences, mental overexertion does not always ex- 
hibit these two phenomena in equal proportion, but one or the other 
predominates according to the circumstances of the nutrition of the in- 
dividual. It is clear that those persons whose cerebral circulation is 
poorer will sooner suffer a loss of mental capital if they are forced beyond 
their normal mental working power, just because the overconsumption of 
elasticity that is made necessary by the overexertion does not find adequate 
reimbursement in the nutritive properties of the blood; and it is also 
clear that those whose cerebral circulation is especially abundant are 
enabled to retain their mental capital longer even if subjected to severe 
nervous strain of work. The disturbances noted in course of time in such 
an individual are more likely to be those of auto-intoxication from re- 
tained waste products. (Pages 43-44.) 

Handworterhuch der Staatswtssenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. /.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor 
of Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. 
LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeitsieit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

In modern industry the activity of the worker is usually confined to 
certain muscular groups alone. The burden therefore rests upon a few 
overworked organs. The same muscles, the same nervous tissues, and 
the same parts of the brain are continually at work. In this way fatigue 
comes on much more rapidly than where an alternation allows temporary 
use of various organs, thus giving them time for rest. As, in monotonous 
muscular work, muscular fatigue comes on quickly, so with monotonous, 
one-sided mental work (for instance, long-continued addition) fatigue 
comes on very quickly. In general, fatigue of the nerves approaches more 
slowly than muscular fatigue; but, on the other hand, nervous repair 
takes a much longer time. (Page 1215.) 

Man realizes fatigue not only by the less satisfactory results of work but 
also by sensations of pain and aversion. These are warning signals and 
protective devices of nature, by whose help injury may be averted. But 
it is possible that in the zeal of work these signals may be ignored. The 
injurious effects will therefore, however, not be avoided. Again, the signal 
may be noticed but cannot be heeded through the compulsion of circum- 
stances. The day's work must be finished, and work must be kept up 
longer for the sake of the day's wages. Then, with the utmost strain of 
the will power, further activity must be wrung from the wearied organism. 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 77 

But this effort of will also means an expenditure of energy, probably a Germany 
more excessive drain upon albumen. (Pages 1215-1216.) 

Etude sur V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generale FRANCE 
de VAdulte. [Study of the Effect of the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

According to the same author (Lagrange) there are two other types of 
overwork which are not due to auto-intoxication : first, organic exhaustion ; 
an individual compelled to work with expenditure of physical strength 
must, if his nutrition is insufficient or imperfectly assimilated, draw upon 
his reserve tissues for material for combustion, and, when this reserve is 
exhausted, the organs essential to life are next drawn upon to supply the 
necessary energy. The organism thus deprives itself of the organic 
elements indispensable to the equilibrium of health. This is auto-phagia, 
or exhaustion. According to Lagrange, overwork, insufficient sleep and 
nourishment, and, above all, excessive hours of work, give rise to organic 
exhaustion. The second type of overwork mentioned is dynamic ex- 
haustion; here there is a sort of exhaustion of the motor nerve centres. 
This form of fatigue shows no appreciable anatomical changes, but only a 
loss of energy. It results from an over-expenditure of nerve force. 
(Pages 45-46.) 

Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of S^^jf 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on 
the IVhite Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

As the result of overwork Hodge, an American physiologist, found 
structural changes in the nerve cells which rest removed. F. H. Scott 
(Journ. Physiology, Vol. XXXIV, Nos. 1 and 2, p. 145) states that in 
nerve cells there is formed from the nucleus and Nissl bodies of the cell a 
substance which passes into the nerve fibres. These fibres are capable 
of carrying impulses without becoming fatigued, but they cannot maintain 
the end-organs of the nerve in a condition of activity beyond a limited 
period. It would appear, therefore, as if some substance were given out 
from the nerve cells, hence as a consequence the readier fatigue of the 
central nervous system compared with the peripheral. Scott tried to 
locate the seat of fatigue. Muscle fibre may become fatigued, also the 
nerve cells in the spinal cord, owing to the hypothetical substance already 
alluded to being used up and time not given for fresh secretion to have 
been formed. (Page 8.) 



yS FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Brain IVork and Overwork. Dr. H. C. Wood, Clinical Professor of 

STATES 

Nervous Diseases in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 
Blakiston, 1880. 

Voluntary motion of a hand and arm is the result of a complicated 
series of acts. Successive discharges of nerve force occur, commencing 
in the upper brain and passing downward along the spinal cord and out- 
ward along the nerves until the muscles are reached and are called by the 
nervous impulse or force into action. It is a lesson not to be forgotten, 
that in exercise, not merely the muscle, but almost the whole nervous sys- 
tem labors; and that muscular movements are just as truly a putting 
forth of nervous power or energy as are mental efforts. (Page 92.) 

There is certainly in the adult some antagonism between hard physical 
and mental labor. Muscular work rests upon a putting forth of nervous 
energy, and the man who has exhausted his stock of nervous energy in 
violent exercise cannot be expected to perform a prodigy of brain labor. 
(Page 98.) 

Alienist and Neurologist. Vol. XXI. Influence of Age upon the Pro- 
duction of Nervous Diseases. William C. Krauss, B.S., M.D. 
St. Louis, Hughes, 1900. 

The study of the influence of exhaustion upon the central nervous 
system has received renewed vigor and enthusiasm since the classic ex- 
periments of the American investigator, C. F. Hodge, and later verified 
by those of Vas, Lambert, Lugaro, Mann, and others. In a series of 
brilliant experimental researches, Hodge has established the existence of 
definite morphological alterations in the cell bodies of neurons accompany- 
ing the excessive exercise of their physiological function. His experi- 
ments on cats, sparrows, pigeons, and honey bees, showing that after 
prolonged exercise or activity demonstrable changes take place in the 
protoplasm and nucleus of the cells of the brain and cord, are familiar to 
you all. (Page 647.) 

The Harvey Lectures, 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906. 

The term, muscular fatigue, requires a word of explanation, for it 
has been shown by various investigators, including Waller, Abelous, 
Santesson, and Joteyko, that when the muscle in fatigue ceases to respond 
to stimuli sent to it through its nerve, it is still capable of contracting on 
direct stimulation. Their inference from this fact is that the motor nerve 



NERVOUS FATIGUE 79 

endings within the muscle are the first part of the mechanism to succumb, united 

STATES 

This inference is probably justified; the nerve endings are probably more 
susceptible to fatigue than the protoplasm of the muscle cells, and hence 
the muscle protoplasm itself within the organism probably never reaches 
the stage of profound exhaustion. . . . (Page 173.) It has long gone 
without dispute that in prolonged activity the brain and spinal cord 
succumb first, and thus the exhaustion of the peripheral tissues is pre- 
vented. The nerve center has been compared to the fuse of an electric 
circuit, the burning out of which protects the muscle from grievous in- 
jury. By most upholders of the neuron theory central fatigue has been 
referred to the bodies of the nerve cells, in which Hodge, Vas, Mann, 
Lugaro, Eve, and others have demonstrated histologic changes after 
activity. . . . (Pages 175-176.) 

While these histologic changes after excessive activity have generally 
been interpreted as significant of fatigue, there does not exist general 
agreement as to their mode of origin. (Page 176.) Other experiments, 
however, indicate that there is less justification than has commonly been 
supposed for the idea that the central nervous system fatigues before the 
muscular system, and lead us to suspect that the reverse is true. (Page 177.) 

With the general problem in this somewhat uncertain state, what can 
we say of mental fatigue? That it is a reality can not, of course, be de- 
nied. It is characterized pre-eminently by a weakening of the powers of 
attention and the reproductive phase of memory, and the psychophysical 
laboratories have shown us in innumerable ways how it manifests itself. 
. . . We can not deny fatigue to psychic centers, but the intimate rela- 
tions of central and peripheral fatigue are much in need of exact experi- 
mental study. (Page 180.) 



Bulletin of the Committee of One Hundred on National Health. Prepared 
for the National Conservation Commission by Professor Irving Fisher, 
Yale University. No. 30. Washington. July, 1909. 

The present working day is a striking example of the failure to conserve 
national vitality. In order to keep labor power unimpaired, the working 
day should be physiological — i. e., it should be such as would enable the 
average individual to completely recuperate over night. Otherwise, in- 
stead of a simple daily cycle, there is a progressive deterioration. A re- 
duction in the length of the work day would be a chief means of improving 
the vitality of workmen, as well as the worth of life to them. The fatigue 
of workmen is largely traceable to their long work day and serves to start 
a vicious circle. Fatigue puts the workman in an abnormal frame of 



8o FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED mind. He seeks to deaden his fatigue by alcohol, tobacco, exciting amuse- 

ments, and excesses of various kinds. The momentary relief which he 
thereby obtains is purchased at the expense of an increasing suscepti- 
bility to fatigue, resulting sooner or later in complete depletion of his vital 
energies and in the contraction of tuberculosis or other fatal disease. 
(Page 45.) 

The relatively slight impairment of efficiency due to overfatigue leads 
to more serious impairment. Just as minor ailments prove to have an 
unsuspected importance when considered as gateways to serious illness, 
so the inefficiency from fatigue is vested with great significance as the 
first step toward minor ailments. Obviously if overfatigue could be re- 
duced to a minimum, this reduction would carry with it the prevention of 
the major part of minor ailments, which in turn would lead to a great re- 
duction in more serious illness, and this finally would lead to a great re- 
duction in mortality. A typical succession of events is first fatigue, then 
colds, then tuberculosis, then death. Prevention, to be effective, must 
begin at the beginning. (Page 47.) 



(4) Muscular Fatigue 

The dangers of excessive working hours for women are 
increased by the fact that the onset of fatigue is often un- 
perceived by the worker. Not until the damage is done and 
health is impaired by the strain of overlong hours is the in- 
jury manifest. 

Yet though fatigue may thus accumulate unperceived, 
the laws of fatigue and its progressive growth have been 
exactly studied by scientific instruments of measurement. 
The most important such instrument — the ergograph — 
was devised to measure the fatigue of a single muscle or 
group of muscles. It records the curves traced upon a 
revolving cylinder by momentary contractions of the finger 
muscles lifting a known weight or stretching a spring of 
known tension at regular intervals. Such a record shows 
a steady diminution of the lifting power of the muscle, the 
rate and regularity of the diminution varying with in- 
dividuals. 



MUSCULAR FATIGUE 8l 

After a certain degree of fatigue has set in, the muscle 
becomes incapable of performing further work unless a 
lighter weight or less tension is involved, or its contractility 
is restored either by artificially irrigating the muscle or by 
allowing an interval of adequate rest to intervene before 
renewed exertion. If fatigue has not proceeded too far, 
this suffices to remove the toxic fatigue products which have 
been produced in the muscle. After exhaustion has set in, 
a much longer period of rest is required to restore the muscle 
to use, or it may become wholly incapacitated. 

To prevent injurious accumulation of unperceived fa- 
tigue, therefore, over-exertion through excessive working 
hours must be prevented. 

Special Reports on Educational Subjects. Vol. IX. On the Measurement Germany 
of Mental Fatigue in Germany. C. C. Th. Parez, German Master at 
Merchiston School. London, IVyman, 1902. 

The application of the first of the above-mentioned methods (physical 
or muscular test) is due to Mosso, professor of Physiology in Turin, who 
perfected a method of measuring the work done by a certain group of 
muscles in raising a definite weight again and again at regular intervals 
until complete exhaustion ensued. 

For this purpose Mosso hit upon the idea of employing an adapted 
form of the myograph, an instrument devised by H. von Helmholtz for 
recording muscular contractions, the principle of which may be gathered 
from the following well-known experiments: 

The leg of a frog is separated from the rest of the body, and to its ex- 
tremity a pencil is attached, which is so arranged that its point comes in 
contact with a cylinder covered with sooty paper, which revolves round a 
vertical axis; as long as the leg remains at rest, the pencil traces out an 
even line on the revolving cylinder, but if the nerves connected with the 
muscles are excited by electricity, the muscles contract, and the pencil 
traces a curve on the cylinder, first upward and then downward, whose 
form corresponds to the muscular contraction of the leg, and gives a 
measure of the energy developed in the leg by the nervous irritation pro- 
duced by electricity. After continued application of electricity, the 
muscle becomes tired and the curves traced on the cylinder show a cor- 
responding modification in size and form. 
6* 



82 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Acting on the principle here exemplified, Mosso constructed the ergo- 

graph, an instrument designed to record the work done by a particular 
muscle or group of muscles of the human body. The chief point aimed at 
in the construction of the instrument was to isolate the working muscles 
completely, so that no other muscle could be in a position to aid them when 
tired. The apparatus is accordingly arranged so that one part of it holds 
the arm, hand, and all the fingers fast, except the middle finger, which 
alone is capable of extension and contraction; that is, the flexor muscles 
alone can be brought into play; the other part of the apparatus is similar 
to Helmholtz's instrument, except that to the writing apparatus, which 
records the curves on the cylinder, a weight of two, three, or more kilo- 
grams is attached. 

When using the instrum.ent, the person who is to be subjected to the 
test contracts his middle finger at regular intervals of time, generally 
every two seconds; the height to which the weight attached to it is 
raised, is recorded on the cjiinder, and decreases gradually until at length, 
in consequence of fatigue, the flexor muscles have no longer the power to 
raise the weight at all, so that the mark on the cylinder appears simply a 
straight line. If a grown man uses a weight of three to four kilograms, 
and repeats the contractions every two seconds, he is usually able to raise 
the weight forty to eighty times, each lift being, as a rule, slightly less 
than the previous one. . . . 

If the highest points of all the separate contractions as recorded on the 
cylinder be joined, the result is a line of characteristic form known as the 
Curve of Fatigue. 

This curve displays a characteristic and constant form for each in- 
dividual, supposing him to be in fresh condition and the weight raised 
and the intervals of time to be the same at each trial, from which it may 
be inferred that every person has special characteristics as regards capa- 
city for work, and liability to fatigue. This inference is confirmed by the 
following experiment : The nerves of the muscles employed in lifting the 
weight, attached to the weight were subjected to the action of an electric 
current, so that all mental influence was eliminated. In this case the 
curve obtained from the record of the work done by the excited muscles 
showed again the characteristic form peculiar to the individual, although 
deficient in length and height. At the same time, however, variations 
in the mental and physical state of the individual have of course a direct 
influence in the form and size of the curve; the curve is in fact, as Mosso 
tells us, "the resultant of a complexity of causes which influence the 
muscles, nerve centres, and circulation, and depend upon the composition 
of the blood, and the general condition of the system." 



MUSCULAR FATIGUE 83 

Increase and decrease of bodily vigour, practice, mode of life, duration Germany 
of sleep, rest, mental excitement, physical as well as mental exertion, all 
tend to cause modification of the curve. . . . 

Practice, of course, strengthens the muscles and enables them to 
perform more work in course of time, but the results of practice can easily 
be distinguished and do not effect the characteristic form of the curve. 
(Pages 531-532.) 

A comparison of curves obtained from different individuals affords an 
interesting insight into their respective working powers. 

Seldom are the curves alike; the number of lifts varies, as also the 
height of each single effort. 

With some persons the contractions attain the same height for a con- 
siderable period and drop suddenly towards the end, with others they drop 
more quickly at first, while in the case of others again, the height de- 
creases regularly for a considerable period and suddenly sinks to a mini- 
mum after some time. (Page 533.) 

In fact, the record of the ergograph bears out the results of ordinary 
observation, that some persons feel tired and begin to play almost im- 
mediately while others work at comparatively high pressure for some 
time and give way suddenly as complete exhaustion ensues, some are 
capable of longer, others of shorter periods of work.* (Page 533. ) 

Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science, Vol. /.] Edited hy Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. 
LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arheits^eit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

Precise estimates of phenomena of fatigue are more easily made in 
the case of muscle than of nerve. Energetic muscular work makes extra 
work for the heart, lungs, and digestion, that is easily estimated. If, 
for instance, the pulse rate exceeds 50-60 per cent of its rate when at 
rest — if it is over 140, and if after 10 minutes' rest it has not yet fallen to 
normal, we have before us an injurious degree of fatigue. 

Respiration should not exceed the rate existing in a state of rest by 
more than 75 per cent, and after a fifteen minutes' pause for rest it should 
not remain higher than 30 per cent above normal. Elevation of the body 
temperature to 39° or 40° centigrade (Fahrenheit 103°-104°) is unques- 
tionably very harmful. 

* For another full description of the ergograph see the Text Book of Physiology 
by William H. Howells, M.D. Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1907. 



84 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



The most exact estimate we can make of the consumption of energy is 
that obtained by the test of the oxygen consumption of the body. This 
procedure it is true, requires the use of complicated apparatus in physio- 
logical laboratories. (Page 1215.) 

Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert 
on the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match 
Committees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton Co., 
1908. 

During inactivity living muscle is absorbing oxygen from the blood and 
is throwing off small quantities of carbonic acid — it is storing up glycogen 
and fat; but during activity the nutrition of the muscle is quite altered. 
A larger quantity of oxygen is absorbed, the carbonic acid evolved is 
considerable, glycogen disappears, for it is used up, and the temperature 
rises. The contractile substance of the muscular fibre becomes acid in 
reaction, owing to the presence of lactic acid and other derivatives. When- 
ever muscular activity is carried to the point of exhaustion, glycogen, 
which is the source of the muscular energy, disappears. It is used up, 
being transformed into carbon dioxide and water with lactic acid. Al- 
though deprived of glycogen, muscle can still contract owing to the nitro- 
genous substances it contains. Muscular activity requires nervous ac- 
tivity as well. Nerve cells as producers of force, nerve fibres as carriers, 
and muscles as the agents of contraction are all involved in manual labour. 
Each of these plays its own part in fatigue. (Page 9.) 



ITALY 



Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 
1903. Vol. V, Section IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des 
methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres 
dans les diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences 
physiologiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel ou tel mode d' organisation du travail ? [To what extent may fatigue 
resulting from occupation be estimated by physiological methods, and 
what arguments can medical and physiological science present in favor 
of special methods of industrial organisation ?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, 
University of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

The curves of work production and of contractile energy in voluntary 
muscular work, both under a given rhythm and under a spontaneous 
rhythm, have shown us that the unfavorable conditions of work may be 
unperceived by the workman who is subjected to a task beyond his 



MUSCULAR FATIGUE 85 

Strength. This possibility is greater than is realized, for the observations italy 
of Zuntz and Schumberg have proved that, though muscular work pro- 
vokes ordinarily a greater expenditure of albumin, a fatiguing piece of 
work performed by an organism in a state of slight inanition results in an 
accumulation of albumin, an augmentation of the muscular mass, from 
whence there is an augmentation of the absolute strength of the muscles; 
so that even in a condition of slight inanition the individual may still 
exact greater and greater efforts from his muscles. 

All circumstances which hamper work in any way, such as ill health 
or local pain, have the effect of augmenting the expense of energy in pro- 
portion to the external work . . . We can then affirm, as a general law, 
thsit fatigue finds its expression in an abnormal augmentation of the expendi- 
ture of tissue materials as compared with work done. (Page 28.) 

When, after fatiguing work, ordinary reagents show traces of albumin- 
uria, it must be concluded that the muscular effort, even if it has not been 
too prolonged, has surpassed the physiological limits of the individual. 
The resistance of the human body to work depends on the integrity of its 
organs; all work results in a destruction of organic substance which should 
be replaced by food. Alimentary substances constitute not only an aid 
to matter, but to energy also. The sum of energy which they represent is 
estimated by the calories developed during the combustion of aliments, 
while a definite amount of mechanical work estimated by kilogrammeters 
corresponds to these calories. Now, man can transform into motor force 
the energy brought to him by his food, and this is a more or less economical 
way according to circumstances. If conditions are favorable, the useful 
result may correspond to a third of the energy contained in the substances 
consumed; but this proportion between energy employed and useful 
result may fall to one-sixth, and then there will be waste. 

This latter working system is injurious to the organism and must be 
scrupulously avoided, since, if waste augments and continues, the nutri- 
tive alterations of the muscle, which at first were only quantitative, be- 
come qualitative as well; that is to say, the affHux of blood having become 
insufficient, the muscular substance undergoes a remarkable and lasting 
alteration and becomes functionally damaged. (Pages 27-28.) 

Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologie, 1890. Physiologische Ahtheilung. 
Uber die Geset^e der Ermiidung. [The Laws of Fatigue.] Dr. Ar- 
NALDO Maggiora, University of Turin. Leipzig, 1890. 

My experiments proved that after one whole night's wakefulness the 
muscles weary much more quickly, so that at 8 a. m. of the following morn- 



86 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY ing the amount of mechanical work obtainable from them is reduced to 

the half of what it would be under normal circumstances. 

In the daytime, after a night without sleep the fmger contractions give 
one contraction of normal or nearly normal size, but the next ones fall 
off with unusual rapidity. As in anaemia, the reserve strength may be 
observed to diminish even though spasmodic or single contractions may 
be performed. 

Mosso has shown that, under such circumstances (nightwork without 
sleep), not only the irritability but the productive capacity is lessened. 
The diminution of mechanical work is often more extreme than that 
caused by anaemia. (Page 226.) 

Loss of sleep promotes muscular fatigue for the reason that it brings 
about a general exhaustion of the organism. The muscles can, it is true, 
continue to perform some work, but they more quickly give out and the 
amount of mechanical work they produce is small. 

This exhausting effect of loss of sleep is not altered by taking food, but 
disappears only after a compensating degree of sleep. (Page 227.) 



FRANCE 



Travail et Plaisir. [IVork and Enjoyment.] Charles Fere, Doctor of 
Medicine, Paris, Alcan, 1904. 

The maximum useful work of a muscle is obtained (in experimentation) 
with a medium weight. Increase of this weight can only be balanced by 
a much greater increase in. the intervals of rest allowed between muscular 
contractions. The more frequent the contractions the smaller is the 
quantity of work and the greater the fatigue. The longer the rest pauses, 
the less fatigued does the muscle become. The strength of a muscle under 
intermittent work may attain almost double that which it displays under 
continuous work. Rapid contractions exhaust the oxygen of the blood, 
place the muscle in an anaerobic state which is fatal to it, while inter- 
mittent contractions permit the blood to renew its oxygen, which destroys 
the noxious and toxic products of muscular activity. ... In voluntary 
ergographic work a rhythm is spontaneously established which represents 
the maximum frequence compatible with constant work. (Page 20.) 



BELGIUM Instituts Solvay. Travaux du Laboratoire de Physiologic, Tome VI, Fasc. 4. 

Les Lois de V Ergo graphic; Etude Physiologique et Mathematique. 
[The Laws of the Ergograph — a Physiological and Mathematical Study.] 
Mile. J. loTEYKO. Brussels, Misch and Thron, 1904. 

All physiologists agree in attributing a double origin to muscular 
fatigue. There is, from the view-point of chemistry, a predominance of 



MUSCULAR FATIGUE 87 

the process of disassimilation over that of assimilation. On one hand Belgium 
there is progressive consumption of elements necessary to activity which 
cannot rebuild themselves rapidly enough to suifice for the exigencies of 
the moment, and on the other hand there is an accumulation of waste 
products which cannot be eliminated or neutralized with sufficient rapid- 
ity. (Pages 393-394.) 

Consumption of stored elements is never absolute: a muscle ceases 
to contract before complete exhaustion of its reserves. ... It is, then, 
not so much the consumption of all reserves as the impossibility of draw- 
ing further upon them that characterizes fatigue. ... It is generally 
admitted that, in its initial contractions, a muscle does not consume the 
same materials as it consumes in its fmal contractions. (Page 394.) 

Mosso has devised an apparatus which records the curve of nervous 
effort which functions during fatigue. He has demonstrated by experi- 
ments with the ponometer that the nervous stimulus necessary to produce 
contraction in muscle is much greater if it is fatigued than if it is rested. 
"Effort increases with fatigue" (Mosso). Thus ergographic fatigue has, 
for effect produced, increasing resistance in the muscles (proof of the 
peripheral seat of fatigue), and it is to overcome this resistance that the 
nerve centres are compelled to send to the periphery orders of increasing 
intensity. The ponometric curve, says Mosso, follows, therefore, a 
course which is the inverse of the ergographic curve. (Page 398.) 



The Harvey Lectures, 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. united 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906. biAiivb 

Owing to the unequalled opportunity of applying to the study of mus- 
cular activity the exact methods of the physicist and the chemist, the 
phenomena of muscular fatigue are known more exactly than those of 
other tissues. . . . Let ... a muscle be stimulated by a series of artificial 
stimuli of equal intensity, regularly repeated and applied either directly to 
the muscle itself or indirectly through the mediation of the nerve, and let 
the muscle perform mechanical work, such as the lifting of a certain load. 
We may then observe the following phenomena: the degree of shortening 
of the muscle during each contraction increases for a considerable time, 
hence the height to which the load is lifted or the amount of work that is 
performed is gradually increased. Later the reverse occurs — the shorten- 
ing decreases, reaches its original amount, falls below it, and disappears 
slowly and very gradually, the muscle becoming incapable of performing 
further work unless a stronger stimulus or a lighter load be employed, or 
a period of rest be allowed to intervene, or the chemical composition of the 



OO FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED muscle be artificially altered in a suitable manner. The irritability of the 

muscle at first increases and later decreases; its total capacity for per- 
forming work begins to decrease at the beginning of the experiment. 
(Page 170.) 

More than twenty years ago the Italian physiologist, Mosso, devised 
the important apparatus called the ergograph, and by its means began 
the long series of studies of voluntary contractions in man, which has 
made the Turin school famous, and has immeasurably extended our 
knowledge of fatigue in living human beings. ... An ergographic record 
usually consists of a series of curves of momentary contractions, at regular 
intervals, of certain finger muscles, either one or more, a known weight 
being lifted or a spring of known tension being stretched. Such a record 
exhibits in fatigue a gradual diminution of the lifting power of the muscle, 
the rate and regularity of the diminution varying with individuals. . . . 
In the course of the experiments I have quoted, it may justly be said that 
fatigue begins with the first contraction — the muscle is less capable of 
work by reason of this contraction. It is convenient to set aside the late 
stages as the period of exhaustion, although the beginning of such a period 
is not marked by distinctly physical phenomena. If at any time the 
muscle be irrigated by a stream of fresh blood, by Ringer's solution, or 
even by an indifferent isotonic solution of sodium chloride, or, what is less 
efficient, although in some degree effective, if it be allowed simply to rest, 
the physiologic pendulum tends to swing back, the irritability and the 
total capacity for work increase, and physiologically the organ is pushed 
back to an earlier stage of the fatigue process; in other words, the muscle 
is in some degree restored. (Pages 172-173.) 



(5) The Greater Strain on Fatigued Muscles 

The need of limiting the length of working hours for 
women is due to the fact that the greatest strain is attend- 
ant upon ''overtime," or work continued after and in addi- 
tion to the regular working day. 

When the hours of labor are so long that work must be 
continued after fatigue has set in, the dangers to health 
are correspondingly increased. Greater injury results from 
work done by fatigued muscles than from severer labor 
accomplished before the worker is tired. This is because 



GREATER STRAIN ON FATIGUED MUSCLES 89 

Strain, or the continued exertion of will power to keep up, is 
more exhausting than work in itself. 

Scientific investigation confirms this fact and demon- 
strates by the ergograph that the final small contractions 
of the finger muscles expend more energy and exhaust more 
than the first large ones, made before fatigue has set in. 

Archiv fur Anatomic und Physiologic, 1890. Physiologischc Abthcilung. ITALY 
Ubcr die Gcsetic dcr Ermiidung. [The Laws of Fatigue.] Dr. Arnaldo 
Maggiora, University of Turin. Leipzig, 1890. 

At the outset of my experiments I found that muscles which had been 
wearied rapidly regained their former energy after the night's rest, but 
that, by subjecting them to continuous work through the day without 
sufficient time for rest, they gave a regularly diminishing amount of 
mechanical work as the day went on. (Page 205.) 

It was shown by my experiments that for the first three observations 
an hour's rest period was sufficient for each hand, to restore energy com- 
pletely, but not after the three first trials. Following muscular fatigue 
which is not completely banished we get a mechanical result which di- 
minishes in a regular ratio. (Page 206.) 

Having found a one-hour pause insufficient, I repeated the experi- 
ments with a pause of an hour and a half for rest. It was proved that 
this also did not suffice to keep the muscles up to their full capacity, as 
the amount of mechanical work gradually diminished. Then in another 
series of experiments I lengthened the pause to two hours, and found this 
period was sufficient to keep the muscles up to their full capacity and to 
prevent the development of fatigue, so that from morning to evening the 
muscles were able to produce that normal amount of mechanical work 
that they exhibited after full and complete rest. (Page 207.) 

It is important to give the muscles a rest in the beginning, so that 
fatigue does not accumulate, if it is desired to obtain recurring me- 
chanical work from them at regular periods throughout the day. (Page 
207.) 

Fatigue is complicated here (in certain experiments which have been 
described) because the utmost possible exertion of the will was continually 
made. This altered the results, because, as Mosso has shown, and as I 
have also demonstrated, strain is more exhausting than work. (Pages 
210-211.) 

The work performed by a muscle that is already wearied is much more 



90 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY harmful in its wear and tear than severer work would be under normal 

circumstances. (Page 211.) 

It is a well-established fact that muscles weary much more quickly 
under direct stimulus than when they are indirectly stimulated by the 
nerves, and that a more powerful nerve stimulus is required to make a 
wearied muscle contract than one which is rested. (Page 211.) 

It was shown plainly by a series of experiments that, when the strength 
of the muscle was not completely exhausted, but the task was remitted 
before the final stage of weariness came on, the muscle remained much 
more capable and wearied less easily, being able to produce an amount of 
mechanical work which was double that produced when it was worked up 
to full exhaustion, even though the most favorable conditions of periodical 
rest were then allowed. (Page 213.) 

These observations teach that the last smaller contractions of a work 
tracing exhaust more than the first large ones, and this is most important, 
as it proves that strain is more fatiguing than work. This result is also 
stated by Mosso and Kronecker. (Page 213.) 

Anaemia produces the same results as fatigue. (Page 217.) 

The fatigue of the working muscles reproduces itself in those that are 
not working directly. (Page 218.) 

Mayer, in his work "Die organische Bewegung in ihrem Zuzammen- 
hange mit dem Stoffwechsel," stated that weariness, when it did not 
simply result from a momentary excess of work, was diffused over the 
whole muscular system; for instance, the temporary work of one arm does 
not fatigue the other arm, but after a fatiguing walk the arms as well as 
legs are indisposed to further exertion. This I have demonstrated experi- 
mentally with the ergograph. (Page 218.) 

After a fatiguing day's march, certain soldiers' hand tracings showed a 
notable diminution of energy even after the night's rest, being very low 
at 7 A. M., less so at 9 and 11, but only rising to normal energy by 3 p. m. 
(Page 224.) 

Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin. 1896. 
Translated hy Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

The consumption of our body does not increase in proportion to the 
work done. If I do a unit of work, I cannot say that I shall have a unit 
of fatigue, nor that, if I do twice or thrice the amount of work, I shall have 
twice or thrice the amount of fatigue. 



GREATER STRAIN ON FATIGUED MUSCLES QI 

Dr. Maggiora, in a series of researches carried on in my laboratory, ITALY 
has shown that work done by a muscle already fatigued acts on that muscle 
in a more harmful manner than a heavier task performed under normal con- 
ditions. 

This method was as follows: By a preliminary series of experiments, 
he proved that two hours' rest is required before every trace of fatigue 
disappears from the flexor muscles of the fingers after they have been 
exhausted by a series of contractions in the ergograph. This was the 
period of repose which Dr. Maggiora, for example, had to allow his muscles 
in order to annul entirely all the effects of the exhaustion. If he dimin- 
ished this period, if, for example, he allowed only one hour instead of two 
to elapse between one series of contractions and another, it was only 
natural that the muscle should do less work because it was insufficiently 
rested. 

Now, it might be thought that if the work were reduced by one half, 
the period of repose might also be reduced in the same proportion. But 
by experiment it was found that the period of repose might actually be 
reduced not to a half, but to a quarter; that is to say, if thirty con- 
tractions are required to exhaust a muscle completely, the period of repose 
necessary after fifteen contractions is only half an hour. These observa- 
tions show that the expenditure of energy in the first fifteen contractions 
is much less than in those following; and that the fatigue does not in- 
crease in proportion to the work done. . . . We find that the work done 
during the first fifteen contractions is much greater than that done during 
the second. ... If the energy of the muscle is not completely exhausted, 
that is to say, if the final contractions are not made, the fatigue is much 
less, and the muscle is able to perform more than double the amount of 
mechanical work which it would do if it worked to the point of exhaustion 
with the most favorable conditions for repose. 

Every one who has made the ascent of a mountain is familiar with the 
fact that the last part of the climb, when the summit is almost attained, 
demands a much greater effort than that necessitated by greater difficulties 
when one was less fatigued. Our body is not constructed like a locomotive 
which consumes the same quantity of carbon for every kilogrammetre of 
work. When the body is fatigued even a small amount of work produced 
disastrous effects. (Pages 150-152.) 

I have stated that our organism is more injured by work when it is 
already fatigued. One of the causes of this is that the muscle having 
consumed in normal labour all the energy at its disposal finds itself com- 
pelled by additional work to trench upon other provisions of energy which 
t has held in reserve; and thus it happens that the nervous system lends 



92 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



its aid with a greater intensity of nervous action. But though the nervous 
energy comes more into play the contractions of the fatigued muscle are 
weak. (Page 152.) 

The workman that persists in his task when he is already fatigued not 
only produces less effective work, but receives greater injury to his or- 
ganism. 

The intervals between one effort and another should be longer when one 
is tired, because one's energies are restored less rapidly, the excitability of 
nerve and muscle having been diminished by fatigue. (Page 157.) 

Etude sur V Influence du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generate de V Adult e. 
\Study of the Effect of the Length of IVorking Hours upon the General 
Health of Adults.] Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

Maggiora, after numerous experiments, proved that, in order to obtain 
a series of tracings of normal fatigue in one and the same day and from 
one hand only, it was necessary to allow two hours to intervene between 
the tracings, while, if the experiment was made with a hand previously 
fatigued, it was necessary that a much longer time of rest be allowed in 
order that the strength of the hand be completely restored. Two hours 
did not suffice to restore the normal energy. 

By the aid of the ponometer, Mosso showed that a much stronger 
stimulus is necessary to produce muscular contraction when the muscle 
is fatigued than when it is rested. While the output of work produced in 
a fatigued state is diminished, the nervous effort is progressively greater; 
the wearied muscle needs a more intense nervous action to make it con- 
tract. This physiological law is shown in all the acts of our daily life. 
. . . Every one knows what a fund of nerve energy must be expended to 
enable him to sustain with outstretched arms a weight which at first was 
hardly felt. (Pages 49-51.) 



Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. /.] Edited hy Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Oher Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. 
Lexis, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

A workman, in the morning hours, between 9 and 10, with an ex- 
penditure of energy {a), produces an output {x). In the last hour of 
the day, on account of fatigue which was plainly felt and required special 
exertions of will power, he produced an output of |, but not with the ex- 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST 93 

penditure of energy a, but with a ^+|. It would therefore be a great Germany 
mistake to think that, as x has cost one hour of work, | has cost only half 
the work. It would actually correspond to an expenditure of energy, 
not of ^, but 3^. 

Precisely because a general relation between time spent, work, and out- 
put may be assumed, one can easily fall into the error of regarding all 
prolongation of working hours as economic advantage and all reduction as 
disadvantage. (Page 1219.) 

If this error still persists it is because practical and easily utilizable 
methods of exact measurement are still new and of recent development. 
(Page 1220.) 



(6) The Physiological Function of Rest 
(a) Rest Needed to Repair Expenditure of Energy 

During rest, fatigue disappears. Rest is thus a physio- 
logical necessity. With the intensity of modern industry, 
the individual worker can keep up efficient labor only on 
condition that the fatigue engendered on one day is com- 
pletely repaired before the next day. If fatigue is not 
balanced by adequate rest, a deficit remains which may be 
little noticed at first, but which inevitably accumulates, 
and after a shorter or longer period results in physical 
breakdown. 

When an individual has worked to exhaustion through 
excessive hours of labor, normal rest does not suffice for 
repair. He has literally "used himself up.'' 



Die Menschliche Arheitskraft. [Human Energy.] Dr. Gustav Jager, Germany 
Professor of Zoology, Physiology, and Anthropology, Stuttgart. Mu- 
nich, Oldenburg, 1878. 

The incidents of the transformations of albumins in the tissues make it 
clear that repair after overfatigue is a very slow process, . . . and ex- 
plain the more remote fact that overfatigue often results in a permanent 
ruin of the constitution by interfering with the regulatory apparatus. 
(Page 280.) 



94 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Gesammelte Ahhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete JVorks. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Verkiiriung des Industriellen 
A rheii stages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society, Jena, 1901. 
Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

Now, when an activity is repeated daily in the same grooves, in the 
same form, the individual concerned can keep up this activity day by day 
only on condition that the fatigue engendered on one day has been com- 
pletely banished by sufficient rest and proper nutriment before the next 
day's work is undertaken. 

If even the smallest deficit remains after the equalization of fatigue 
and rest, — a deficit that would not be noticeable on any one single day, 
but which is added to daily and accumulates little by little, then the in- 
evitable consequence is that, after a more or less prolonged period of time, 
the individual goes to pieces physically. It is the same as when he spends 
daily ever so little more than his income. If he keeps this up, there comes 
a time when he inevitably becomes bankrupt. (Page 226.) 

I can therefore say: every workman whose work is done under these 
labor conditions must be afforded daily recuperation for his expended 
energies, and the daily compensation of rest and food must wholly equal 
his average total of exertion. The daily average of fatigue and expended 
strength must be absolutely balanced by fresh strength and recuperation, 
because the least deficit will accumulate gradually and will finally have 
ruinous effects. (Page 226.) 



Concordia: Zeitschrift der Zentralstelle fUr Volkswohlfahrt, Nov. 1, 1907. 
Arbeit, Ermiidung, und Erholung. [Work, Fatigue, and Recuperation.] 
Dr. F. RiTZMANN, Factory Inspector, Carlsruhe. Berlin, 1907. 

In a modern allegory of life the three fates, weaving the destiny of 
man, would bear the names Work, Fatigue, and Recuperation, for our 
whole being is so exclusively under the domination of these three entities 
that a life free from them is hardly conceivable. It is the more remark- 
able, then, to see how superficial a knowledge most men have of the actual 
significance of these three things. And yet an understanding of the rela- 
tions between work, weariness, and reparative rest is no less important for 
mankind and for social betterment than the comprehension of other, defi- 
nitely hygienic, questions of a general nature. The question of the relation 
between work, fatigue, and recuperation is pre-eminently a hygienic one. 

The problem is: How must we arrange our work in order to remain, in 
the widest sense, healthy in mind, body, and spirit? What is Work? 



PHYSIOLOGJCAL FUNCTION OF REST 95 

The science of psychology is concerned, roughly stated, with the study Germany 
of every kind of mental process. Among these processes, again roughly 
stated, are to be reckoned every manifestation of life not arising exclu- 
sively from muscular movements; namely, the sensibilities, desires, varia- 
tions of disposition, thought, judgment, and all such manifestations. 

. . . Every alteration in the condition of the brain sets free a mental 
wave: every mental process brings about an alteration of the state of the 
brain, even as every physical process is inseparably bound up with an 
alteration of the muscular structure. 

Physiological investigations have taught us that chemical transformations 
occur during these changes of nerve and muscular cells, and with the knowl- 
edge thus gained we are able to give a new definition of the term "Work." 

By "Work" we mean every process which tends to destruction of 
tissue cells and the production of poisonous waste matter, and in contrast 
to this we define the term Reparation, or Recuperation, to signify all 
those processes which tend to a rebuilding of the tissue cells and the re- 
moval of poisonous wastes. Full and intimate knowledge of the nature 
of thoSe chemical processes which I have defined as destruction of cells and 
production of poisonous substances has not yet been attained. We know, 
though, familiarly, that accompaniment of work which we call Fatigue. 

This conception of the idea of work which we attain through physiology 
is the amplest that we can imagine. It includes all fatigue-producing 
activity, even when, as with Sport and Play, this activity is not classed 
in popular terms with work. It includes also, however, as well, — and 
this is essential for its usefulness, — every activity which, according to 
popular terms, whether in the physical or in the politico-economical sense 
of words, can be regarded as work. 

Physiology gives us not only a useful definition of the term Work, but also 
of the terms " Fatigue" and " Recuperation," and this brings us measurably 
nearer to a solution of our problem — the hygienic regulation of work. 

Fatigue is at once the inseparable companion and the bitterest enemy 
of work. The most important task of the Hygiene of Work is, therefore, 
to combat fatigue. (Pages 359-360.) 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
Sept., 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermildung durch Berufsarheit. 
[Fatigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, Hirsch- 
wald, 1908. 

The increasing use of machinery as a substitute for handwork, and the 
rapid tendency toward subdivision of labor, are bringing about conditions 



9^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY that are more and more favorable for the employer, but for the worker, 
on the contrary, harder and less favorable, and especially more monoton- 
ous. Therefore, from the point of view of health preservation, it must be 
considered proper to regulate working hours in accordance with the prin- 
ciples enunciated by Abbe: viz.: The daily supply of energy required for 
daily labor must be gained by sufficiently long periods of rest and econom- 
ical use of strength, and must not exceed the expenditure of energy re- 
quired by the accelerated pace of industry. (Pages 593-594.) 

A consideration of all the factors concerned in the study of overwork 
resulting in over-fatigue, shows that these factors are many. One of the 
most important of all, from the standpoint of prevention, and in the in- 
terest of the workers' health, is this: The intensiveness of the labor, or 
the relation of the energy expended in fulfilling the work's requirements 
to the length of time during which energy is so expended, must not over- 
step a certain fixed limit. That industrial establishments fail notoriously 
in meeting this first and fundamental requirement of labor protection, 
admits of no debate. (Page 604.) 

Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gbttingen, and Edg. 
LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeitsieit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

Quotation from Pope Leo XIII. Encyclical on the Labor Problem: 

"Justice and Humanity protest against demands upon laboring men, 
so excessive that the body gives way and the spirit is dulled. As in man 
all things have their limitations, even so is it with the capacity for labor, 
and no one can exceed the limits of his powers. 

"Working strength is enhanced, it may be true, by practice and habit, 
but yet it attains its due eificiency only when, at proper times, rest is 
provided. 

"In respect to hours of work the principle should be recognized that 
they should not be longer than is proportioned to the workmen's strength." 
(Page 1205.) 

"In general it should be a fixed rule that as much rest should be granted 
the worker as is needed to restore his strength; for the release from work 
has the restoration of strength as its purpose." (Page 1205.) 

These declarations are in so far noteworthy that they state with great 
clearness the fundamental principle that the time for rest after the day's 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST 97 

work must allow complete restoration of the expended strength. . . . GERMANY 
On the other hand the laborer's right to a compensation that exceeds 
mere recuperation, his right to pleasure, enjoyment of family life, etc., is 
not recognized. (Page 1205.) 

It is a cause for thankfulness that some employers have with great 
pains voluntarily undertaken a methodical and unprejudiced presentation 
of material (relating to the problem of overwork), and, also, that the 
symptoms of fatigue are at present receiving a thorough-going investiga- 
tion at the hands of factory hygienists and physiologists. In this way 
alone will it be possible to understand the causal relations of fatigue, and 
discriminate between typical and adventitious features described in in- 
dividual observations. Then, too, for the first time it will become possible 
with exact estimates of fatigue symptoms (by instruments of precision) 
to agree upon the proper times for pauses for rest, and upon that duration 
and intensity of work which will yield the maximum of product, while 
at the same time the working power of the laborer is fully conserved. 
(Page 1212.) 

The numerous instances of favorable results from reduced hours can 
no longer be ignored, even though all are not of equal value. Taken in 
connection with the most recent psychological and physiological researches, 
they strengthen the presumption that, where working hours exceed ten, 
. . . either the employer suffers from slack work or the worker from over- 
fatigue. A reduction to ten hours would therefore, as a rule, not only 
work no injury to economic interests, but would further them in many 
cases. As to how far a progressive reduction to 9 or 8 hours could go 
without injury to commerce, this must also be learned by special investi- 
gations which should cover every detail and accessory circumstance in the 
case. Above all it must be shown, by perfected statistics and scientific 
methods of precision both physiological and psychological, whether, or 
why, with a 10-hour day a sober workman of normal physical and mental 
equipment should suffer fatigue which cannot be compensated for by the 
daily resting times. 

(Length of work, heat, dust, nutrition, etc., must be estimated.) If 
it appears that the direct or indirect origin of this fatigue is to be found in 
the length of working hours, then, in such cases, in the interests of the 
general health, a reduction of hours must be sought, even if,* economically, 
some risk is run. If this reduction cannot be assured by the contracting 
parties, then the state must take it in hand. Should there be no necessity 
on hygienic grounds, nevertheless from the standpoint of commercial 
progress it may appear desirable to approach the 9 or 8 hour limit. (Page 
1216.) 

7* 



98 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Nov., 1895. Le Travail Humain et ses 

Lois. [The Laws of Human Work.] Francesco S. Nitti, Professor, 
University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1895. 

In every case it is certain that the workman disposes of a certain amount 
of potential energy, which, within certain limits, is capable of augmenta- 
tion and of diminution, 

A workman, even one sufficiently nourished, cannot produce, beyond a 
certain limit, without injury. Beyond this limit, if he continues his 
work, he exposes himself absolutely to fatigue and exhaustion and his 
productivity is gained at the expense of his own organism. (Page 1026.) 

There is a cruel antithesis between the interests of the capitalist and of 
society. . . . If for the benefit of the former the workman must consume 
his own tissues and is not able to protect himself, then production proceeds 
along with the degeneracy of the worker. (Page 1026.) 

The consequent loss of energy is a social loss. . . . Society sees the 
average strength of the workman diminishing, morbidity and mortality 
extending, the physical development of the masses retrograding. . . . 
It is therefore natural that society should awake to the need of interference. 
(Page 1027.) 

It is certain that there is a work-limit which the average workman 
cannot exceed without danger, as beyond it he risks fatigue and degen- 
eracy. (Page 1027.) 

The physiological law that work done by a tired muscle injures it more 
than work done under normal conditions can be verified by every one 
from his own experience. (Page 1027.) 



Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 
1903. Vol. V, Sec. IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on par des methodes 
physiologiques etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans les 
diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences physio- 
logiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur de tel 
ou tel mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fatigue 
resulting from occupation be estimated by physiological methods, and 
what argument can medical and physiological science present in favor of 
special methods of industrial organisation?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, 
University of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

In answer to a political economist, who has said "the physiological 
limits of the duration of work have not yet been found and cannot easily 
be found," the physiologist replies that the physiological limit of the dura- 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST 99 

tion and the intensity of work is that limit beyond which the organism is ITALY 
reduced to the necessity of working wastefully. (Page 33.) 

Royaume de Belgique. Conseil Superieur du Travail, 6e Session. 1901- BELGIUM 

1902. T. I, Fasc. II. [Higher Council of Labor, 6th Session. 1901- 

1902. Vol. I, Part II.] Note sur la Legislation relative au Repos 
Hebdomadaire. [The Weekly Rest Day.] Brussels, 1902. 

M. Adolphe Prins (Member of Council): 

To-day under present conditions of competition and production it is 
more than ever necessary to protect working men from overstrain. Rest 
is more and more indispensable as work becomes more intense. In every 
line of activity, only the regular alternation of work and rest is able to 
conserve energy, and those individuals and nations whose lives are so 
regulated will surpass others in economic rivalry. (Pages 81-82.) 

M. Beco: 

The man who works must have rest. Rest must alternate with work; 
this is a physiological necessity. The workman becomes incapable of any 
physical or mental work whatever if after a certain number of hours he 
is not able to rest. The desire for sleep, after a certain time, overcomes 
him. . . . Then in addition to rest during the day, the worker needs 
periodic rests. (Page 124.) 

Every health regulation must have a scientific, exact, and acknowledged 
basis. . . . Thus the demands of hygiene justify the legal protection of 
workers against special dangers, poisons, and physical overstrain from 
excessive labor unreasonably prolonged. No one contests the legality of 
such legislation; ... on such lines the police power is extensive and 
effectual, and its right to be so is not disputed. (Page 129.) 

M. Denis (Member of Council): 

. . . Man has a new right, the right to leisure and rest, as well as work. 
. . . The history of labor legislation can be given in two words: the right 
to rest is inherent in man's physiological structure. It involves an in- 
flexible social necessity to do away with the exhaustion resulting from 
overwork, and to conserve working power, the most precious possession 
of a nation. 

On this the most learned physiologist of Italy has said: "The prodigious 
development of industry and of machinery is resulting in extreme intensity 
of labor and the law of exhaustion must of necessity put a limit to greed for 
gain." 

Science traces out a path for the modern lawmaker: his difficult but 
glorious mission is to accomplish the normal synthesis of these two in- 



00 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELOroM alienable rights springing from the very laws of life — the right to employ 
one's working powers and the right to conserve them. (Page 169.) 

When we compare the actual working day (in Belgium) with the most 
moderate requirements for rest endorsed by scientists, we fmd that there 
is an absolute necessity for a periodic rest day. 

At the International Conference on Sunday Rest in 1889, Dr. Haegler's 
report justified the weekly rest day from the point of view of hygiene, as 
he said, "The labor of each day leaves an organic deficit, and the weekly 
rest day is essential for the purpose of restoring this loss." (Page 172.) 

Maggiora has demonstrated that in order to obtain the same quantity 
of muscular work evenly throughout the day, the muscles must, from the 
outset, have their proper periods of rest, so that they can act each time 
with fresh energy and so that fatigue will not accumulate. This accumu- 
lation of fatigue is the most important phenomenon to consider now; it 
arises in the course of the day, from every breach of equilibrium between 
work accomplished and rest given to the muscles. As soon as work is in 
excess, or rest is insufficient, there is an accumulation of fatigue, and this, 
as Maggiora has shown, is displayed by a diminution of effectiveness. 
What is true of the different hours of the day is true from one day to an- 
other. Waste products of fatigue are carried over from one day to another 
with cumulative effect. Maggiora's writings contain a remarkable chart 
showing the effects of a sleepless night, — that is, a night without repair. 
From this chart we may gain an idea of the rapid cumulation of waste 
substances, and the gradual extension of the organic deficit. (Page 174.) 

School children have been submitted to valuable tests. Intellectual 
fatigue is measured by tactile sensibility as recorded by the esthesiometer. 
This sensibility diminishes gradually as fatigue increases, and there is 
a veritable accumulation from one day to another. To return to the 
normal condition of tactile sensibility, a weekly rest day must be obtained. 
(Pages 173-174.) 

Thus, the accumulation of fatigue which is favored by the modern in- 
dustrial system and the intensive character of machine work takes place 
from day to day, and the weekly rest is a liquidation period — a necessary 
re-establishment of the physiological equilibrium. (Page 174.) 



FRANCE Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 

1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Die Ermiidung durch Berufsarheit. [Fa- 
tigue as a Result of Occupation.] Prof. Imbert, Montpellier. Berlin, 
Hirschwald, 1908. 

An industrial machine works, but is not fatigued. 

A muscle, on the contrary, works, and becomes fatigued. 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST lOI 

Fatigue, essentially and exclusively a physiological phenomenon, France 
characterizes the human organism when the latter is regarded as a working 
machine. Consequently, even from the economic point of view, the dis- 
cussion of every question involving the factor of labor in industry is in- 
complete if the influence and the possible consequences of fatigue are not 
contemplated. Fatigue, on the other hand, disappears during rest, both 
as to its causes and effects, if the rest is as much prolonged as the labor 
has been exacting. 

Rest is thus, quite aside from any social or humanitarian consideration, 
a physiological necessity. . . . 

It is physiologically and, one may add, economically essential that the 
nights rest and the weekly rest should suffice to permit the human or- 
ganism, which has been subjected to a period of labor, to return to its 
normal state. If this does not happen, the human machine deteriorates, 
as complained of by the worker, and the output suffers, which affects the 
employer, to say nothing of the charges upon society which may result 
from such deterioration. 

Overstrain is present if, after the daily or weekly rest, at the moment of 
resuming labor, traces of fatigue still remain and the primal and normal 
productive capacity has not been restored. (Pages 634-635.) 

Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, AUSTRIA 
1894. Vol. Ill, Sec. IV. De V Influence de la Duree du Travail sur 
VEtat de Sante des Travailleurs. [The Influence of Working Hours on 
the Conditions of Health of Working People.] Dr. Jules Felix, 
Hungary. Budapest, 1895. 

Every being must obey the law of work, which is nothing else than the 
regular and harmonious functioning of the body . . . but there is also 
another law, that of the necessity of rest, the need of repair ... for or- 
ganisms, as well as for separate organs, all prolonged activity leads to 
exhaustion, and to effect repair, periods of rest from functioning are im- 
perative. . . . The time needed for rest, and the materials required for 
repair must be proportioned to the organic expenditure, to the intensity 
and duration of work; or, in other words, the duration of rest and the 
reparative material of every organism must be proportioned to the length 
and intensity of its activity. (Page 2.) For civilized man sleep alone 
is not enough for rest. It is also necessary — even indispensable, if man is 
to preserve the plenitude of his physiological, intellectual, and moral 
faculties, and not degenerate — that he shall vary his work as well as his 
recreation. (Page 3.) 



102 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT History of the Factory Movement from the Year 1802, to the Enactment of the 

BRITAIN j^^ j^^^^^, g'li ^^ j^^y "Alfred." (Samuel Kydd.) London, 

Simpkin, Marshall, 1857. 

Rest of body is the first requisite for one who is habitually overworked; 
no evil can flow from this requirement being reduced to practice. Ex- 
perience has proved that factory regulation has been beneficial in body, 
mind, and morals to those for whose good it was intended. Its promoters 
have not been deluded theorists, they have been practical statesmen. 
(Vol. I, page 268.) 



Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 
Vol. XI, 1867. On Public Recreation. Wm. Hardwicke, M.D. 
London, Longmans, 1868. 

The necessity for lessening the hours of severe labour begins to show it- 
self in many ways. 

In former times when labour was not so ardent, holidays were many; 
now that civilization advances and labour begins to be more intense, the 
exhaustion is consequently greater, and the period of rest must be more 
frequent or more prolonged. (Page 476.) 



The Lancet. Vol. I, March 4, 1905. "Overwork." {Editorial.) 
London. 

Ingenious attempts have been made by Maschek and other writers 
to classify work under the three headings of effort, velocity, and duration, 
and to arrive at formulae which should show the proper relations of these 
three elements to each other. Such attempts have not been conspicu- 
ously successful, but they at least serve to call attention to the distinctness 
of the elements in question and to the necessity of taking each of them into 
consideration when endeavoring to estimate the output of an individual. 
They remind us that the spurt of a tired man may be more injurious to 
him, may, in common parlance, "take more out of him," than sustained 
efforts more deliberately accomplished. . . . 

Maschek succeeded in establishing at least one formula which appears 
to show that the time occupied in strenuous endeavor should not greatly 
exceed one-third of the twenty-four hours. 

... Of the three elements . . . that of duration is usually most under 
our command, and those who would retain health and attain longevity 
should see to it both that their efforts are not too prolonged and that 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST I03 

they are followed by corresponding periods of rest. . . . If we turn to the great 
elements of velocity in work we shall find abundant reasons for the belief 
that its predominance implies an amount of strain greatly in excess of the 
actual accomplishment and calls for a corresponding equivalent of repose. 
The wise man who must spend his life in living will be all the more solicit- 
ous so to manage his expenditure that it may not be wasteful and he will 
be careful to guide his activities to this end. ... He will realize that 
exceptional duration and exceptional speed of work should be avoided 
whenever possible, and that when they cannot be avoided, they should 
be followed by correspondingly exceptional periods of repose. (Pages 
579-580.) 

The Harvey Lectures. 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. united 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906. 

Mankind at present can administer no food or drug that can push the 
wearied cells up the metabolic grade, either simultaneously with their 
descent or quickly after the descent has ceased. Only the assimilation 
and detoxication that normally come with rest — and, best, rest with sleep 
— are capable of adequate restoration of working power. (Page 190.) 

(&) Rest Needed to Repair the Deficit of Oxygen 

The injuries from excessive working hours are confirmed 
by medical observation and science, which has demon- 
strated that during over-exertion the expenditure of oxygen 
of any individual exceeds the amount respired, and must be 
met by the reserves of the organism, by the oxygen of the 
blood and tissues.* 

Handwbrterhuch der Staatswissenschaften, Bd. I. [Compendium of Po- GERMANY 
litical Science, Vol. /.] Edited hy Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of Po- 
litical Science in Halle; L. Elster, Oher Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. 
Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. Loening, 
Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of IVork.] Dr. H. 
Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

We distinguish Exhaustion from Fatigue. 

In exhaustion there is a deficiency of reparative material for the resto- 
ration of the vital tissues. This is especially a deficiency of oxygen. 
* See footnote on page 109. 



104 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY During work more oxygen is taken from the red blood corpuscles than can 
be normally replaced by them from respiration and food. (Verworn.) 
While fatigue can be banished by rest, exhaustion can only be overcome 
by fresh supplies of oxygen and organic tissue building material in food. 
Recuperation takes place in fullest extent only in sleep, as during sleep the 
consumption of oxygen is diminished. 

Now it is to be remembered that consumption of energy takes place 
not only in work, but also in the vital processes themselves. We are 
continually losing heat (energy) to our environment. There is, however, 
a great difference. The organism at rest requires, in 24 hours, about 
2770, the actively working organism 4550, calories. 

The consumption of energy during work results from the mechanical 
and mental activities required by the occupation processes. To this is 
added further consumption by standing; certain postures of the body; 
strain of special senses; jarring of the body, by machinery, etc. 

In this wise, fatigue of the muscular and of the nervous apparatus is 
brought about. In laborious work, involving the whole body, fatigue of 
the entire muscular apparatus appears. (Page 1215.) 



FRANCE Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Paris, 

1900. In one vol. Legislation et Reglementation du Travail au point 
de vue de VHygiene. [Labor Legislation and Regulation from the 
Standpoint of Hygiene.] M. Edouard Vaillant, M.R.C.S. Eng- 
land. Paris, Masson et Cie., 1900. 

Physiological researches have proved that if work has been pushed to 
exhaustion, normal aliment and normal rest no longer suffice for repair; 
that any work acts more injuriously upon a wearied muscle than even 
heavy work under normal conditions, that when the normal muscular 
energy has been expended, the nervous system is under excessive strain 
and becomes exhausted; that this nerve exhaustion, combined with physi- 
cal work, increases with a rapidity proportionate to the expense of nervous 
force and attention demanded by the work; that all muscular work, how- 
ever light, aggravates a condition of intellectual fatigue and nervous 
tension, and that rest must be sufficient to ward off fatigue. 

It is most important to determine the physiological limits of work which 
the workman should not overpass. . . . 

This limit contracts or expands with the physical and intellectual 
strength, the age, sex, general and technical education, training, the 
nature and surroundings of the work, and a number of other temporary 
or permanent conditions. (Page 509.) 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST IO5 

The principle of organic protection is this: an individual, in no matter France 
what category, should never exceed the physiological boundary of labor 
where, through duration, or intensity of effort, overwork and fatigue 
begin. 

This limitation could be easily determined by simple hygienic and 
medical oversight of that kind now established in an elementary way by 
the German wage-earners insurance, if carried to completion and estab- 
lished generally throughout industry. (Page 510.) 

But even now this physiological limit can be determined. . . . 

Com.bustion, the principal source of energy, can be measured. The 
transformation of gases, the pulmonary respiration, being the sum of 
all partial respiratory processes and the amount of oxygen absorbed and 
of carbonic acid eliminated increasing directly with work, there is a dis- 
turbance of equilibrium and an organic deficit, whenever the expenditure 
of oxygen in the formation of carbonic acid has exceeded the amount 
respired, and has been met by the reserves of the organism, by the oxygen 
of the blood and the tissues. Intoxication then begins with stasis of 
carbonic acid. 

The robust workman, turning the wheel of Pettenkofer and Voit, dem- 
onstrated how much he had surpassed this limit even in his nine-hour 
day, and despite his rest. (Page 511.) 

The respiratory quotient . . . varies precisely with work, its factors 
increasing with work and diminishing with rest, for the relation of the 
carbonic acid produced to the oxygen consumed expresses exactly the 
expenditure of potential glycogen during work and its renewal during rest. 
(Page 511.) 

The value of the preservative individual warnings of fatigue is evident. 

This signal of alarm, from an organism that has, by overwork, or 
defect of training and education, arrived at the physiological limit of 
work, is not an uncertain psychic incident. It is a warning: in default 
of rest, physical effects will follow: morbid effects, menacing intoxication, 
organic alteration caused by overwork (surtravail) and fatigue. (Page 
513.) 

As the work of each day causes an organic deficit, the weekly rest, as 
shown by Dr. Haegler, is a necessity to make up this deficit: the effort 
is to add one half day of Saturday. 

But even with this addition, the reparative rest is not sufficient, its 
effect is only apparent. The rest of the Sunday and Saturday half 
holiday should be entered upon without a deficit, without fatigue, and 
it should be a period of recuperation of strength and of the organic equi- 
librium, bringing it to a higher level, giving more moral and physical 



io6 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE Strength to man, — the active energy necessary to carry him without en- 

cumbrance of fatigue through his next period of work. (Page 514.) 

For all these reasons overtime should be forbidden by law, as infract- 
ing the limitation of hours, causing overwork, and contributing to non- 
employment. (Page 517.) 

Etude sur V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generale 
de VAdulte. [Study of the Effect of the Length oj Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

During the night, and above all during sleep, man absorbs more oxygen 
than he exhales. According to Voit and Pettenkofer, this surplus oxygen 
is stored up to be used later in the exertions of the day. (Page 173.) 

Dr. Haegler demonstrated, on the basis of Pettenkofer's experiments, 
that, as each day's work added a slight deficit of oxygen to the deficit of 
the day before, a weekly rest of 24 hours was necessary to replenish the 
normal sum of oxygen used in labor or continuous exertion throughout the 
week. (Page 175.) 



De la Fatigue et de son Influence Pathogenique. [Fatigue and its Patho- 
genic Influence.] Dr. M. Carrieu, University of Montpellier. Paris, 
Bailliere et Fits, 1878. 

It had been well established (by Lavoisier and others) that the organism 
consumed more oxygen during activity than in a state of rest, but the 
experiments of Voit and Pettenkofer necessitate some modifications of the 
results of previous experiments. (Zeitschr. f. Biol., 1866.) 

Their researches put into evidence interesting diiferences in the same 
individual, accordingly as he was at work or at rest, awake or asleep. 
The subject of the experiment was a vigorous workman of 28 years of age. 
He had the same quantity of food whether working or resting except that 
when working he drank an additional 600 grams of water. The results 
are thus shown: 

July 31, 1868. Day of Rest 





Absorbed 


Eliminated 






Oxygen 


CO2 


HO 


Urea 


of CO I 


From 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. 
From 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. 


234.6 
474.3 


532.9 
378.6 


344.4 
483.6 


21.7 
15.5 


175 

58 


Total for 24 hours 


708.9 


911.5 


828.0 


37.2 


233 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST 
August 3, 1868. Day of Work 



107 



FRANCE 





Absorbed 


Eliminated 






Oxygen 


CO2 


HO 


Urea 


of COi 


From 6 a. m. to 6 p. m. 
From 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. 


294.8 
659.7 


884.8 
309.4 


1094.8 
947.3 


20.1 
16.7 


218 
44 


Total for 24 hours 


954.5 


1284.2 


2042.1 


37.8 


262 



These numbers show that the excretion of carbonic acid is more con- 
siderable by day than by night, and that per contra the absorption of 
oxygen is more active by night than by day. (Page 14.) 

Further the amounts of water and of carbonic acid excreted are much 
greater during work than during rest, whilst the oxygen absorbed does not 
vary to the same extent. Finally, a larger proportion of oxygen is in- 
spired during the night following the day of work, whilst the amount of 
carbonic acid excreted was nearly the same in both cases. 

The authors conclude from these experiments that oxygen inspired at 
night is stored up to be drawn upon next day to oxidize food materials. 
If one works, he exhales a greater amount of CO2 and then oxygen must 
be inspired in greater amount during rest. (Page 15.) 



Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Nov. 1895. Le Travail Humain et ses ITALY 
Lois. [The Laws of Human Work.] Francesco S. Nitti, Professor, 
University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1895. 

The workman, busy with his work, does not perceive the oncoming 
of fatigue, or, to speak more accurately, he only perceives it when it has 
attained a certain intensity. This is the principal reason why he does not 
and cannot protect himself: it is the principal reason why every society, 
which desires to prevent a wasteful loss of energy, must necessarily resort 
to regulation to protect him. (Page 1041.) 

Variations between individuals, it is true, are very great, but . . . 
there is an average limit which may be found and applied in legislation. 
What shall this limit be? . . . In the experiments of Voit and Pettenkofer 
it was found that the workman at the end of nine hours' labor had ex- 
pended, in the form of carbonic acid, 192 grammes of oxygen more than 
he had been able to inhale during this time. He had therefore had to give 
up 20 per cent of the supply of oxygen stored up in his tissues. We may 



io8 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY ask, therefore, if the average limit of eight hours would seem altogether 

arbitrary. (Page 1041.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Text Book of Physiology. Wm. H. Howell, Ph.D., M.D.,LL.D., Pro- 
fessor of Physiology in the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. 
Philadelphia, IV. B. Saunders Co., 1907. 

Chemical Changes in the Muscle during Contraction and Rigor. — Perhaps 
the most significant change in the muscle during contraction is the pro- 
duction of carbon dioxid. After increased muscular activity it may be 
shown that an animal gives off a larger amount of carbon dioxid in its 
expired air. In such cases the carbon dioxid produced in the muscles is 
given off to the blood, carried to the lungs, and then exhaled in the expired 
air. Pettenkofer and Voit, for instance, found that during a day in which 
much muscular work was done a man expired nearly twice as much CO2 
as during a resting day. The same fact can be shown directly upon an 
isolated muscle of a frog made to contract by electrical stimulation. The 
carbon dioxid in this case diffuses out of the muscle in part to the sur- 
rounding air, and in part remains in solution, or in chemical combination 
as carbonates, in the liquids of the tissue. It has been shown by Hermann 
and others that a muscle that has been tetanized gives off more carbon 
dioxid than a resting muscle when their contained gases are extracted by 
a gas pump. This CO2 arises from the oxidation of the carbon of some of 
the constituents of the muscle, and its existence is an indication that in 
their final products the changes in the muscle are equivalent in those of 
ordinary combustion at high temperatures, the burning of wood or fats, 
for instance. Moreover, the formation of the CO2 in the muscle is ac- 
companied by the production of heat, as in combustion; and for the same 
amount of CO2 produced in the two cases the same amount of heat is 
liberated. It has been shown, however, in the frog's muscle freshly re- 
moved from the body, that the CO2 is produced whether or not any oxygen 
is supplied to the muscle, — that is, when the muscle is made to contract 
in an atmosphere containing no oxygen, or in a vacuum. In this respect 
the parallel between physiological oxidation and ordinary combustion 
fails. Wood, oil, and other combustible material cannot be burnt at high 
temperatures in the absence of oxygen. We must believe, therefore, that 
in the muscle there is a supply of stored oxygen, and that the muscle will 
give off CO2 as long as this supply lasts. The oxidation, instead of being 
direct, as in the case of combustions, is indirect. . . 

The oxygen is absolutely necessary to the normal activity of the muscu- 
lar tissue, but the tissue, by storing the oxygen, can function for some 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST IO9 

time when the supplv is suspended. As Pfliiger has expressed it, in a united 

• • • STATES 

most interesting paper, the oxygen is like the spring to a clock — once 
wound up, the clock will go for a certain time without further winding. 
It must be borne in mind, however, that different tissues show consider- 
able variation in the time during which they will function normally after 
suspension of their oxygen supply. The cortex of the brain, for instance, 
loses its activity, — that is, unconsciousness ensues almost immediately 
upon cessation or serious diminution in the supply of blood, and the same 
may be said of the functional activity of the kidney. In the cold-blooded 
animals, with their slower chemical changes, the supply of stored oxygen 
maintains irritability for a longer time than in the warm-blooded animals. 
(Pages 62-63.)* 



Du Repos Hehdomadaire. [The Weekly Rest Day.] Esteve de Bosch. BELGroM 
Antwerp, 1907. 

Dr. Haegler has represented in an ingenious fashion the variations 
which occur in the entirety of our vital forces, in the form of a line, "&, " 
which, instead of remaining on the same level at all times, rises or falls 
according to the alternations of work and rest. (Page 49.) 

The night's sleep repairs a part of the losses which we suffer by day, 
but it is not sufficient to make up entirely for the deficit produced by the 
hours of work. The result is that the line is not found to be on the same 
level in the morning that it was 24 hours before, and the level of our energy 
is lowered slightly from day to day. (Page 50.) 

This chart was shown by Haegler at the Swiss International Exposition 
in 1896 in Geneva. Another chart, also by Dr. Haegler, and shown at 
the same exhibition, shows that the length of life is longer with those 
who observe the custom of a weekly day of rest. (Page 51.) 

* Note. — Since this brief was compiled and presented to the courts, the suc- 
ceeding editions of Howell's Textbook of Physiology omit the passage quoted above 
and state instead: 

"The fact that a muscle will continue to contract on stimulation even when in 
an atmosphere free from oxygen was formerly interpreted to mean that some oxy- 
gen had been stored previously by the muscle and that contractions were possible 
only as long as this supply held out. But since it has been found that the con- 
tractions under these circumstances are not accompanied by an output of carbon 
di-oxid, this supposition has been rendered doubtful. It has been suggested, on 
the contrary, that the energy for the contractions in these cases may be obtained 
from other than oxidative changes, for example, from the small amount of heat- 
energy liberated in the splitting of sugar into lactic acid." (Edition of 1911, Page 
66.) 



10 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELGIUM 




Haegler's Chart 



Fatigue curves showing morning rise and afternoon depression. The upper line 

shows the effect of the weekly day of rest. 
The lower line shows the gradual depression of strength with daily work and no time 

of rest. 

(Page 50, in " Du Repos Hebdomadaire.") 




Haegler's Chart, Geneva, 1896 



Line A shows the normal average of life with proper time of rest. 
Line B shows the average life line under overwork and insufficient rest, 

(Page 51, in "Du Repos Hebdomadaire.") 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST I I I 

(c) Adequacy of Resting Time Allowed between Working Hours 
1. In Ordinary Work 

The adequacy of rest depends on the length of time al- 
lowed between working hours. Hence the shorter working 
day benefits the worker, not alone by requiring less expen- 
diture of energy, but by allowing a more adequate period of 
rest before the next working day begins. 

On the other hand, it is precisely after excessive working 
hours that the need of repair is greatest and the time al- 
lowed away from work is least. 

Handhuch der Hygiene. Bd.8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] Edited GERMANY 
by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und Fabrik- 
gesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legislation.] 
Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

. . . We may point out that the social condition of the worker, his 
home, nutrition, and conduct of life are highly important factors in the 
rate of sickness, and that, the longer the working hours, the less oppor- 
tunity is left to him of utilizing these health-preserving forces. (Pages 
27-28.) 



Handbuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt. [Handbook of the General Welfare of the 
Working Classes.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. Vol. II. Ar- 
beiterschuti. [Protection of Working Men.] Dr. Ascher. Stuttgart, 
Enke, 1902. 

The injurious consequences of bad conditions upon health cannot, 
unfortunately, all be as clearly demonstrated [as that of dust in the 
experiments of Moritz and Ropke]; we know, however, that for the 
elimination of dangerous substances from the body a certain time — 
dependent upon the nature of the material and the constitution of the 
individual — is essential, and that therefore a shortened exposure to the 
unfavorable conditions has a double advantage — first, in that the prob- 
ability of elimination of unhealthful material is increased and its unhy- 
gienic consequences more fully avoided. In this connection we must 
consider also the severer forms of fatigue or exertion of organs beyond the 



12 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY physiological limits of their endurance and the impossibility of repairing 
their waste and restoring them to normal conditions without ample resting 
time. (Page 78.) 



Gesammelte Ahhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete Works. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschajtliche Bedeutung der Verkiiriung des Industriellen 
Arheitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society, Jena, 1901. 
Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

I have briefly referred to the balance between expenditure and renewal 
of strength. Renewal of strength by nutriment and rest — upon what 
does it depend? For any one specific individual it is beyond a doubt 
that 'the length of resting time allowed is the paramount condition for 
recuperation of strength. There cannot be the smdlest doubt that one 
who has 16 hours rest between his working hours can repair a greater 
amount of previous fatigue than he who has only 10. Every one can prove 
this for himself. (Page 231.) 

Therefore, aside from the personal factors which one may call the in- 
tensity of metabolism or of the vital functions in different individuals, 
the important thing is the length of time permitted for rest. The day 
has only 24 hours; so the time for rest must be the difference between the 
working day and 24 hours. If the former is 8 hours, there are 16; if 10 
hours, only 14 for rest. (Page 231.) 



FRANCE Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Paris, 

1900. In one vol. Legislation et Reglementation du travail au point 
de vue de l' Hygiene. [Labor Legislation and Regulation from the stand- 
point of Hygiene.] M. Edouard Vaillant, M.R.C.S., England. 
Paris, 1900. 

Professor Setschenoff has dealt cleverly with the physiological problem 
of the necessary relative length of rest and work so that the weariness of 
one day shall not be felt on the morrow. The normal heart with its regu- 
lar rhythm of contraction and relaxation, gains sufficient rest during every 
second to work for a lifetime, its total rest being to its total work as 10 
hours to 6 in 16 hours. Now, giving the industrial worker 8 hours of 
sleep, he has 16 left for work and rest. 

It then seems that during the 16 hours of waking time remaining for 
the worker, his relative rest should not be less in duration than that of the 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST II 3 

heart, especially as the skeletonic muscles are less richly supplied with france 
blood than those of the heart and as physical rest is not complete in the 
waking state. (Page 512.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-32. Report from the Select g^^T^ 
Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

Thos. Hodgkin, Esq., M.D., physician to the London Dispensary, 
Lecturer at Guy's Hospital: 

1094L Is not the body in your opinion, in a very unfit state to renew 
its exertion when it has been insuificiently recreated by sleep, and when 
therefore labour has to be commenced at the beginning of the day with the 
feelings and signs of weariness still remaining? — Certainly, it is. . . . 

10942. That accumulated fatigue you conceive to be peculiarly in- 
jurious to the constitution? — Yes; without the interposition of intervals 
sufficient to repair the demand which has been made on the system. 
(Page 549.) 

John Morgan, Esq., surgeon to Guy's Hospital: 

10998. Do you not think that the body is in a very unfit state to 
renew its daily labour when the preceding evening's sleep has been in- 
sufficient to remove a sense of weariness and fatigue? — Certainly, in a 
very unfit state. (Page 553.) 

Joseph Henry Green, Esq., F.R.S., surgeon to St. Thomas's Hospital 
and Professor of Surgery at King's College: 

11386. Do you not think that labour is peculiarly pernicious and 
prejudicial when it has to be commenced in the morning; the body not 
being suificiently refreshed and recruited by the insufficient sleep of the 
preceding evening? — Certainly. 

11387. And that fatigue perpetuated is peculiarly wearisome, of 
course, to the body, and pernicious to all the functions of life? — Yes, I do. 
(Page 588.) 

Benjamin Travers, Esq., F.R.S., senior surgeon to St. Thomas's 
Hospital in Southwark: 

11605. Is it not a strong indication that labour is pernicious when it 
has to be resumed in the morning with a great sense of remaining weariness 
and fatigue, which has not been dissipated by the rest of the preceding 
night? — Certainly. 

11606. That, long continued, will be, in your opinion, pernicious to 
the constitution? — Certainly, especially so. (Page 606.) 



114 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

2. In Work involving Absorption of Injurious Substances 

Adequate resting time between working hours is par- 
ticularly important in trades where injurious substances, 
such as dust, fluff, or industrial poisons may be absorbed 
by the worker. As all trades share these dangers in greater 
or less degree, the longer the period away from work, the 
greater the possibility that injurious substances may be 
eliminated from the body before another workday. 



GERMANY Handbuch der ArbeiterwoUfahrt. [Handbook of the General Welfare of the 
Working Classes.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. Vol. II. Ar- 
beiterschuti. [Protection of Working Men.] Dr. Ascher. Stuttgart, 
Enke, 1902. 

When we arrange the medical testimony given in regard to the longer 
or shorter working time the following conclusion appears: in any or every 
trade when a substance injurious to health (poison) may possibly be taken 
into the body tissues of the worker, the danger is lessened by just so much 
as the time during which the worker is so exposed, is shortened. The 
longer the period of rest away from work, the greater the possibility of the 
injurious material being eliminated from the body. The same is true of 
mechanically irritant dust. Moritz and Ropke found that, when work- 
men were exposed continuously to breathe in the dust from polishing during 
a considerable period of time, the sensitiveness of the mucous membranes, 
larynx, and bronchi was so diminished that the in-breathed dust could 
not be coughed up and, instead, found lodging place on the delicate vocal 
cords. A short time of rest outside of the dusty air sufficed to restore to 
the tissues their normal irritability, so that the harmful dust acted as an 
irritant and could be expelled by coughing. On this ground they argued 
for longer rest periods and shorter working time. Similar reasons hold 
for shorter hours in all occupation where individual organs — eyes, muscles, 
bony structure, nerves, heart, lungs — are liable to overexertion. Nat- 
urally, then, the free time must be given to healthful exercise and recrea- 
tion. . . . Through all these reports a gradual tendency to shorten 
the hours of labor may be accepted as a modern movement. (Pages 
61-62.) 



PHYSIOLOGICAL FUNCTION OF REST II 5 

Handwdrterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of Po- GERMANY 
litical Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. 
LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeitsieit. [Hours of PFork.] 
Dr. H, Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

. . . The more injurious any process of work is by reason of great heat, 
poison, dust, noise, etc., the more important does it become to provide 
some counterbalance to these harmful influences by shortening the time 
given to labor under these conditions. (Page 1204.) 

An das Schwei^. Industriedepartement, Bern. Die Eidgenossischen switzer- 
Fabrikinspectoren. [Report of the Swiss Factory Inspectors to the 
Swiss Department of Labor on the Revision of the Factory Laws.] 
Schaffhausen, 1904. 

Finally we must mention those arguments in favor of a shorter day 
which have been presented by medical men. A prominent hygienist, 
Dr. Ascher, declares: " In all those industries where more or less injurious 
foreign material is taken into the body of the workman, the danger is 
lessened in proportion to the brevity of the time during which he is ex- 
posed. The longer the periods of rest outside and away from his work 
place, the greater the possibility of the tissues of the body casting off the 
injurious substances. It has been found that, with long or continuous 
inspiration of dust, the irritability of the mucous membrances, larynx and 
bronchi is so much lessened that the inspired dust is no longer coughed up, 
and remains to find lodging place on the delicately sensitive vocal cords. 
For this reason longer periods of rest and shorter working hours are es- 
sential. Analogous reasons are in force for every occupation in which 
overexertion of special organs — eyes, muscles, bones, nerves, heart, or 
lungs — is necessitated by the work." (Page 26.) 

Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, Austria 
1894. Vol. VII, Sec. V. Ober das Verhdltniss der Dauer des Ar- 
beitstages lur Gesundheit des Arbeiters und dessen Einfluss auf die 
offentliche Gesundheit. [The Length of the Working Day in its Rela- 
tion to the Workman's Health and its Influence upon Public Health.] 
Dr. E. R. J. Krejcsi, Vice-Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in 
Budapest. Budapest, 1896. 

The longer the hours of work, the longer the organism is exposed to 
injurious influences; — the sooner bodily resistance is overcome, and conse- 



ii6 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



AUSTRIA quently occupation diseases are early established which might have been 

avoided or at least postponed to a much later period if the hours of labor 
had been short. (Page 327.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 95. Jidy, 1911. 
Industrial Lead Poisoning in Europe. Sir Thomas Oliver, M.D., 
F.R.C.P. 

Increase of the hours of work has been found to be associated with a 
rise in the number of cases of plumbism. A change from six to eight-hour 
shifts of employment was in a Scotch factory found to be the only ex- 
planation of an outbreak of plumbism in a works which had hitherto been 
free. (Page 9.) 



C. Bad Effects of Long Hours on Health 
(i) General Injuries to Health 

The fatigue which follows excessive working hours be- 
comes chronic and results in general deterioration of health. 
While it may not result in immediate disease, it under- 
mines the whole system by weakness and anaemia. Con- 
tinuous overexertion has proved even more disastrous to 
health than a certain amount of privation; and lack of work 
in industrial crises has entailed less injury to health than 
long-continued overwork. The excessive length of work- 
ing hours, therefore, constitutes in itself a menace to health. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-1832. Report from the Select 
Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

William Sharp, Esq., . . . surgeon to the Dispensary, Bradford, 
Yorkshire: 

7097. Do you consider that excessive labour, or labour too long con- 
tinued, has a direct tendency to produce disease and debility, and to 
shorten life? — Yes, I do. 

7080. Do you not think the worst effects are produced by the ter- 
minating hours of a long day's labour? — Yes. (Page 302.) 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH II7 

Samuel Smith, Esq., . . . member of College of Surgeons and practis- great 

• T J BRITAIN 

mg surgeon m Leeds: 

10341. Do you consider the very uniformity of the exertion would, 
in all probability, occasion fatigue, and abate the energies of those who 
have to endure it? — Even supposing no labour whatever were required 
under such circumstances, the merely having to sustain the erect position 
of the body for so long a period is harassing in the extreme and no one can 
have an adequate idea of it unless he has himself been subjected to it. 
(Page 497.) 

10493. Should you attribute part of the pernicious effects upon 
the constitution of those employed, to their being deprived of fresh air? — 
Certainly; the long-continued labour and the want of fresh air are the two 
principal causes of the general effects to which I have alluded. (Page 514.) 

Sir Anthony Carlisle, F.R.S., . . . surgeon in the Westminster Hos- 
pital: 

11035. Is it not an equally received opinion with medical authorities, 
that exercise or labour, so long continued as to produce great fatigue of 
mind and body, without affording due intermissions for meals, recreation, 
and sleep, is inconsistent, generally speaking, with the maintenance of 
health? — I think every one of the points of that question may be answered 
in the affirmative. I can, from my own experience and knowledge, affirm 
that it is so. 

11036. Your affirmation in the respect is founded upon the principles 
of your profession as well as upon your personal experience? — Certainly. 
(Page 556.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXL 1833. Second Report of the 
. . . Commissioners for inquiring into the Employment of Children in 
Factories . . . and Reports by the Medical Commissioners. 

Sir David Barry's report (Scotland) : 

Although both the young and the adult mill-workers may command 
more abundant food and better clothing than their unemployed neighbors, 
there are causes to whose operation they are exposed, which, in a sanitary 
point of view, counterbalance the advantage alluded to. 

1. The first and most influential of all is the indispensable, undeviating 
necessity of forcing both their mental and bodily exertions to keep exact 
pace with the motions of machinery propelled by an unceasing, unweary- 
ing power. 

2. The continuance of an erect posture for periods unnaturally pro- 
longed and too quickly repeated. 

3. The privation of sleep. (Page 72.) 



no FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT Hansards' Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIII. 1844. 

BRITAIN 

He [Lord Ashley] had been told by operative spinners that, under the 
present system of working 12 hours a day, their exhaustion was so great 
that it was absolutely necessary they should have at least 4 meals a day; 
but that, with a reduced period of labour, they would be content with 3 
meals per day. They stated that under the existing system they were 
obliged to take food even without appetite as a stimulus to enable them 
to go through the closing hours of their days' work. ... It was calcu- 
lated . . . that, if the hours of labour were reduced from 12 to 10, it 
would have the effect of prolonging by at least 3 years the duration of the 
working life of the operatives. (Page 1386.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1873. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the half year ending 30th April, 1873. 

The house surgeon of a large hospital has stated that every year he had 
a large number of cases of pulmonary disease in girls, the origin of which 
he could distinctly trace to long and late hours in overcrowded and un- 
healthy workrooms. (Page 43.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. LV. 1873. Report to the Local Govern- 
ment Board on Proposed Changes in Hours and Ages of Employment in 
Textile Factories. J. H. Bridges, M.D., and T. Holmes. 

Experience afforded by residence in the worsted manufacturing town 
of Bradford, and extensive practice among its population during periods 
of from one to thirty-five years: 

A. Amongst the women of factory operatives, much more than among 
the general population, derangements of the digestive organs are common, 
e. g., pyrosis, sickness, constipation, vertigo, and headache, generated by 
neglect of the calls of nature through the early hours of work, the short 
intervals at meals, the eating and drinking of easily prepared foods, as 
bread, tea, and coffee, and the neglect of meat and fresh cooked vegeta- 
bles. . . . 

Signed on behalf of the Bradford Medico, Chirurgical Society, at a 
meeting held February 4, 1873. 

Sub-Committee, 

President, J. H. Bell, M.D. 

P. E. MiALL, M.R.C.S. 
Secretary, David Goyder, M.D. 

(Pages 39-40.) 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH I IQ 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1875. Reports of Inspectors of great 
Factories. »^T*"^ 

The breaking down of the health, the curved spine, the deformity of 
the extremities are not now to be met with; but we are confronted with a 
new evil which has come upon us in the development of the factory system 
which improved sanitary arrangements of dwellings, better water supply, 
purer air, more satisfactory drainage, are not sufficient to eradicate. 
I mean the increased and increasing employment of women in factories. 
. . . Evidence has been given again and again of the unhappy conse- 
quences to child-life and infant development of the working of the mothers 
in factories. A great deal has been advanced lately against the impolicy 
of placing any restrictions upon the labour of adult women and upon se- 
curing to them the power of making contracts as adult men, and even 
those who admit the force of these principles cannot shut their eyes to the 
evils which have existed and still exist in the employment of mothers in 
factories, and which from the demand for adolescent and adult female 
labour in factories are not likely to subside of themselves. The abstention 
from factory labour of women for a month or six weeks after confinement 
would to a small extent mitigate the evil as regards their more certain 
restoration to health, but it would not touch the evils of the loss to the 
infant of its natural food and of maternal care and love. . . . Here is 
a question which demands our most serious consideration, whether, either 
by means of legislation or by other less direct but as effective means, the 
health of the mother and well-being and physical development of the 
offspring can be protected, so as to prevent eventual deterioration, and 
to promote health and happiness in so large a population as our factory 
operatives. (Pages 25-26.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1893. Royal Commission on 
Labour. Group C. 

Mr. Kenneth M. Milligan, Scottish Shopkeepers' and Assistants' Union: 
30962. ... I have letters here from a good many eminent physicians 
in Glasgow proving that not only want of sanitary conveniences, but the 
long hours, and the long time that the girls especially have to stand, is 
very injurious to their health. I have one letter here from a doctor to 
whom I wrote. Dr. Yellowlees, from the Gartnavel Asylum, Glasgow. 
It says, "1 am sure that the long hours of shop assistants are injurious to 
health, and that much might be done to lessen the evil. The mental 
disorders which I have observed in shop girls have been chiefly traceable 



120 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT to bodily weakness and poverty of blood, caused by confinement and 

BRITAIN jQj^g hours." (Page 434.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report oj Select Com- 
mittee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., University of Oxford, Fellow of the 
College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons; attached 
to the London Hospital and the Brompton Hospital: 

5281. . . . The most common effect I have noticed of the long hours 
is general deterioration of health; very general symptoms which we 
medically attribute to over-action, and debility of the nervous system; 
that includes a great deal more than what is called nervous disease, such 
as indigestion, constipation, a general slackness, and a great many other 
indefinite symptoms. (Page 215.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1902. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

Ten and a half hours sitting bent over stitching, requiring very careful 
attention, with two intervals so short that only a hasty meal can be eaten, 
that there is no time for exercise, even were the workers permitted to go 
out, and that day after day, might well try the strongest constitutions 
and ruin the best digestions and nerves. That its effect on the health is 
injurious is constantly brought before one, and anaemic and heavy-eyed 
workers who suffer from neuralgia who form too large a proportion of the 
whole number, make one feel very strongly that some reform is needed. 
(Page 176.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXII. 1904. Report of Inter-depart- 
mental Committee on Physical Deterioration. 

147. Miss Anderson, Chief Lady Inspector of Factories, gave a 
classification of the sources of injury to health, life and limb, from factory 
employment as follows: 

1. Accidents. 

2. Poisoning and damage from toxic agents, or excessive dust, fumes, 
etc. 

3. Overfatigue. 

4. Defective ordinary hygiene. 

As regards the first two, men suffer most, as regards the third, women. 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH 121 

And on this head Miss Anderson as well as Dr. Scott thought there had great 
not been a sufficient amount of scientific study, ... In many cases hours ^^^ain 
are too long for women, and in some industries, especially the clothing 
trade and dressmaking, there are not sufficient pauses for food. Laundries 
and food-preserving industries give an example of too long hours; and 
excessive strain by carrying heavy weights takes place in food-preserving 
works, bleach and dye works, earthenware and china works, and various 
metal trades. (Page 28.) 

The Pioneer of Progress. John Dennis. London, Hamilton Adams, 1860. 

But close and prolonged confinement, at the desk or in the warehouse 
and shop, will enervate the strength of even the strongest constitution. 
The want of time for anything beyond the daily task-work, the monotony 
and hopelessness of toil which ceases not except on the Sunday, and often 
not then, and the stolid listlessness, and in many cases the dissipation, 
which are thus induced, very greatly affect the health, and as far as the 
evil extends destroy the high courage and athletic vigour which formed at 
one time the conspicuous heritage of Englishmen. (Pages 34-35.) 

Hours of Labour. George J. Eccarius. London, Office of Labour 
Representation League, 1872. 

The death rate settles all disputes as to the effect of overwork on health 
and life. On two recent occasions the death rate has proved that constant 
work, which is generally synonymous with overwork, is more dangerous to 
life than a certain amount of privation. During the cotton famine the 
death rate of Manchester fell, and when all work stopped in the East of 
London, and the distress of the poor was at its height, the death rate of 
St. George's in the East sunk to the level of the most favored districts. 
(Page 27.) 

A general reduction of the hours of labour is necessary on social, eco- 
nomical, sanitary, and moral grounds, and is demanded by the working 
classes all over the world. (Page 29.) 

The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, M.D., 
A.B., F.R.C.P., Late Milroy Lecturer at Royal College. London, Per- 
cival, 1892. 

Excessive exertion may operate either over a long period and produce 
its ill results slowly, or be sudden and severe. . . . When such people are 
seized by some definite lesion, attention is so completely attracted to it 



22 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



that the antecedent over-toil laying the foundation for the malady is apt 
to be overlooked. (Page 16.) 

The want of exercise of the body induces general torpidity of functions, 
reduces lung capacity and respiratory completeness, and the activity of 
the abdominal muscles, which aid both respiration and the functions of 
the digestive organs. Hence, the proclivity to venous stasis (congestion), 
particularly in the pelvis and lower extremities and in the rectal vessels, 
with the production of constipation, — and in women of menstrual dif- 
ficulties, — add to these disorders of digestion in their multiform shape, 
debilitated muscular power, and a low vitality and vigor generally. 
(Page 19.) 



GERMANY 



Jabres-Berichte der k. Preussischen Gewerherdthe. [Report of the Royal 
Prussian Industrial Commission, 1894.] Berlin, 1895. 

While the legally restricted working day has been introduced through- 
out in establishments coming under the law, such is not the case in the 
smaller work places or in the laundries, where the health of the working 
women is still seriously endangered by the long hours of work frequently 
spent in unsanitary, ill-ventilated rooms. (Page 252.) 

An excessive working day obtains in the laundries, where the hours 
are almost always from 12 to 14 ... so long a work day as this, and 
under such conditions cannot but be regarded as ominous for health, and 
in fact its bad result is proved by the records of the laundresses' sickness 
funds. (Page 252.) 



Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerbe-Aufsichts- 
beamten. XXI. 1896. [Official Information from Reports of the {Ger- 
man) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1897. 

Complaints are not lacking about the unhealthful influence of industry 
on physical development. The Inspector for Dantzig writes: "On 
account of the predominatingly rural character of the region the women 
alternate between factory and outdoor work and seldom remain for a 
long time in the factory. Consequently their health is good even in 
comparatively unhealthy trades such as rag-picking, etc., and occupation 
diseases are not found here." (Page 246.) 

The occupations of women show no ill results upon morals, but there 
are cases where physical development is injuriously affected and definite 
ailments fostered. In weaving rooms and other places where women are 
obliged to stand at their work varicose veins are more than commonly 
frequent and naturally enough occur more frequently among the married 
women. Zittau. (Page 249.) 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH 1 23 

As to the effect of industrial work on health it is undeniable that when Germany 
women can work out of doors (as in tile works) they always have a healthy 
and vigorous appearance. But in industries where they are compelled 
to sit for a long working day this is not the case. The workwomen of the 
large cities make a distinctly poorer impression in their appearance than 
those of country districts. Posen. (Page 250.) 

Most of the working women who are no longer young, that is from about 
30 years upward, give the impression of being chronically overtired. 
They look badly, worn and old. But the younger working women now 
have a fresher, more robust appearance than formerly. Here we see the 
good effects of the prohibition of child-labor and the improved hygiene of 
workrooms. True, during the years of youth the favorable and unfavor- 
able influences of occupation, affecting the female organism, appear to 
balance each other, but the latter outweigh the former as time goes on. 
The long standing, in itself, causes serious disturbances of the female 
organism. There is no difference of opinion among the medical profession 
on this point. When first youth is past these injuries make themselves 
felt. (Page 251.) 



Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-BericUen der Gewerhe-AufsicMs- 
heaniten, XXII, 1897. [Official Information from the Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

. . . The results are shown in an incredible extent of chlorosis, tuber- 
culosis, nervous diseases, and genital disorders. (Page 263.) 

The inspector for Baden writes that a physician had called his attention 
to the inordinate length of working hours in laundries, where work is 
often carried on until late at night. The physician finds a shockingly 
large number of cases of swollen veins and varicose ulcers among these 
people, as well as conjunctival inflammations of the eyes. 

The ironers had the appearance of utter exhaustion; they were anaemic, 
and tuberculosis was not unusual among them. The at times extreme 
length of hours in laundries is also specified in the report from Leipzig. 
(Page 264.) 



Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerbe-Aufsichts- 
heamten, XXII, 1897. [Official Information from the Reports of the 
(German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

The physicians connnected with the local insurance against sickness 



124 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY in Aachen, in reply to a question of the president as to how far they at- 
tributed ill-health among adult working men to extremely long hours of 
work, replied that the freedom of employers to work their men without 
legal restriction had certainly led to grave abuses, and that there were 
workmen who at times were subject to over-exertion that could not but 
be prejudicial to health. (Page 240.) 

In the interest of the workingmen's health it is greatly to be regretted 
that such long hours are prevalent . . . especially as experiments have 
so often shown that product has not been lessened by reduction of hours 
of work. It is greatly to be desired that the physically broken down fac- 
tory workers (of this region) might have the beneficent aid of a maximum 
working day. 

Well-meaning and clear-sighted employers lament the conditions, but 
can do nothing individually. 

One employer declares that "the very fact that weavers who have 3 or 
4 looms to attend to cannot even stand up straight, because they must 
keep them continuously going — is reason enough for a shorter day." 
(Page 241.) 

Bad conditions are prevalent in tailoring and shoemaking. . . . The 
results of excessively long hours and bad conditions are seen in the pale 
faces, round-shouldered attitude and low vitality of these workers. 
Their most apparent disease forms are articular rheumatism, eye troubles, 
chest and lung diseases, inflammation of the joints and of the abdominal 
organs. In order to overcome the evils of shoemaking and tailoring, there 
should be the same regulation of working time and pauses as in bakeries. 
(Page 259.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aujsichtsheamten im Konigreich Wiirttemherg 
fur das Jahr 1901. [Reports oj the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of Wiirttemherg, 1901.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1902. 

Human physique has not progressed proportionately with the per- 
fection of machinery, — on the contrary, there are signs that it is suffering 
deterioration, and it is therefore not surprising that the workman's body 
cannot for a long stretch of time keep pace with the machine and the 
extensive demands it makes upon his attention and vigilance, without 
suffering serious injury to health. The efforts made in consequence by 
the workers to preserve their health (their only capital) by attaining a 
reduction of working hours and a legal normal day are entirely justifiable. 
(Page 14.) 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH I25 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten und Bergbehordenfur das Jahr GERMANY 
1903. Bd. I. Preussen. [Annual Reports of the {German) Factory 
and Mine Inspectors for 1903. Vol. I. Prussia] Berlin, Decker, 1904. 

Although laundries are usually ample enough, yet the workwomen here 
incur dangers to health from the hot stoves . . . from the continuous 
standing, the strenuous character of the work and the unreasonably long 
hours, which even robust constitutions can hardly resist for any great 
length of time. (Page 58.) 



Die Arheitsieit der Fabrikarheiterinnen. Nach Berichten der Gewerhe- 
Aufsichtsheamten hearheitet im Reich samt des Innern. [The IVorking 
Hours of Women in Factories. From the Reports of the {German) 
Factory Inspectors Compiled in the Imperial Home Office] Berlin, 
Decker, 1905. 

The Inspector for Erfurt urges the introduction of the ten-hour day 
for women because "eleven hours' daily toil in a factory is extremely 
exhausting for the weaker physical organization of woman. Although 
perhaps under good sanitary conditions of work no direct injury to health 
may be traced to the eleven-hours day, still it is certain that women and 
girls who work in factories are worn out much sooner than those who do 
not. The factory worker who has most likely a poor physical inheritance 
to contend with, and is poorly nourished, is liable to frequent attacks of 
sickness." 

Report for Cassel : The ill effects of factory work for women are most 
marked in those cases where long hours are joined to heavy work. The 
female frame is not strong enough to resist the harmful influence of such 
work for any length of time. Although the ill effects may not show them- 
selves at once, it is not unlikely that injuries to health which manifest 
themselves years after may be traced back to former work in the factory. 
The total exclusion of women from the factories is not at present con- 
templated, but the introduction of the ten-hour day will tend towards 
reducing the harmful influence of factory work. (Page 107.) 

From Wiirttemberg: 

The manager of a certain large factory which had shortened its working 
day considerably, found that the amount of sick time lost, as compared 
with the amount under the previous 11 hour day, showed a remarkable 
decrease. He came to the conclusion that the strenuous character of 
m.odern industry made the 10 hour day as much as working women could 
well endure, and that all over this time was directly destructive to good 



126 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY health. This view was corroborated by other employers who had adopted 
the 10 hour day. (Page 109.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-AufsicMsheamten und Berghehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1906. Bd. III. [Reports of the (German) Factory and Mine 
Inspectors for the Year 1906. Vol. III.] Berlin, Decker, 1907. 

Elsass-Lothringen: 

The efforts toward establishing shorter hours are so gratifying that it is 
all the more regrettable still to fmd a number of industries, even some 
which stand high, retaining the systematically long hours of work which 
are bound to exhaust prematurely the mental and physical power of the 
workers. (Page 26.^^) 



Annalen des Deutschen Reichs. Bd. XXI. 1888. [Annals of the German 
Empire. Vol. XXI. 1888.] Der internationale Schuti der Arheiter. 
[International Labor Legislation.] Dr. George Adler, University of 
Freiburg. Munich and Leipsic, 1888, 

The results to the worker of an unduly long working day are easy to 
perceive. His health, his energy, and working capacity are undermined. 
His body becomes more receptive to disease; his family life is ruined. 
His whole time is spent in work, except for the sleep that is necessary to 
maintain life — with the result that he is deprived of all that tends to 
culture and is reduced to a purely animal existence. (Page 482.) 



Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] 
Edited by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und 
Fabrikgesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legis- 
lation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

Among the dangers of occupation in the more restricted sense those 
injuries that are induced by a too prolonged working time and by too 
heavy an amount of work take first place. 

It is evident that the health of even the most robust workingman 
suffers if he is compelled to exceed the limits of his physical capacity — if 
wearied organs are denied the necessary reparation. There must be, 
therefore, in every case a relation between the length of working time 
and severity of work if occupation dangers are to be considered. (Page 
26.) 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH I27 

Berichte iiber die Fahrikinspektion im Jahr 1879. [Reports of the (Swiss) swiTZER- 
Factory Inspectors, 1879.] Bern, Stdmpflische Printing House, 1880. ^^^^ 

It is a great pity that, in estimating the pros and cons of the "normal 
day of work," so little consideration is paid to the results of the long hours 
both on the physical and moral well-being of the worker. 

In going about in the embroidery regions, one hardly thinks of physical 
drawbacks, when seeing the factories, v/hich are usually clean, light, and 
airy; but when one meets men who, formerly robust, have lost their 
healthy looks after a few years of the excessively long hours of work and 
who are now worn out and unstrung; when one hears embroiderers of 48 
years called old and invalid, one feels like inquiring further. It will be 
found that the work is in itself extraordinarily strenuous. . . . The phy- 
sicians in these regions universally affirm the extreme danger to health in 
the unreasonably long hours of work. (Page 14.) 



Berichte iiber die Fahrikinspektion im jahr 1881. [Reports of the {Swiss) 
Factory Inspectors, 1881.] Schaffhausen, Brodtmann, 1882. 

When the normal day was introduced by law for factory workers, it 
was first of all based on reasons of health. More and more numerous 
protests had been made as to the excessive labor imposed upon the worker, 
and the injury to health and strength that was being suffered by our people 
was emphasized on all sides. Measures of prevention against these abuses 
were regarded as counselled by nature, which provides men with the in- 
stincts of self-preservation. To these reasons were added others of a 
social nature. It was hoped to elevate the working classes morally and 
intellectually, to give them more time for family life, social amenities and 
education. (Page 13.) 



Sixth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Vienna, 1887. 
Part XIV. Sec. on Hygiene. Fabrikhygiene und Gesetigehung. 
[Factory Hygiene and Legislation.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss 
Factory Inspector, Vienna, 1887. 

In the factory inspection reports of many countries there may be found 
ample observation of the destructive influence of long hours. Thus a 
Saxon report says of glassmakers "they have high wages, and live well, but 
do not live to old age. They have excessive hours of work." (Page 35.) 



128 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Untersuchungen iiber die Gesiindheitsverhdltnisse der Fabrikbevolkerung 
der Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Saner- 
lander, 1889. 

Labor of an exacting kind, involving extreme muscular exertion, must, 
if it is long continued, have an injurious secondary effect on every part of 
the body. (Page 176.) 



FRANCE Etude siir V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generate 

de VAdulte. [Study of the Effect of the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Dr. Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

There is a weighty factor, over and above such external conditions as 
housing, nutrition, etc., etc., which exercises a widespread influence upon 
the health of the people. This is no other than the duration of the working 
hours of wage-earners. The day's work of the workman, the shop girl, 
... is too long. (Page 20.) 



Revue d'Hygiene. T. 26, 1904. Enquete sur la Situation Sanitaire des 
Ouvriers du Textiles dans V Arrondissement de Lille. [Inquiry into 
the Sanitary Conditions in the Textile Trades in Lille and its Environs.] 
Dr. D. Verhaeghe. Paris, Masson et Cie. 

The longer the working hours and the whole period of occupation in 
the mills the less probability is there that the textile worker may retain 
his health unimpaired. (Page 1066.) 

42.08 to 100 of the textile workers had poor health. . . . Some ail- 
ments were due to bad hygienic conditions, . . . the others were due 
rather to physical overstrain. (Page 1078.) 



ITALY La Reglementation Legale du Travail des Femmes et des Enfants dans 

I'Industrie Italienne. Lionel Baudoin. [Labor Legislation for 
Women and Children in Italian Industry.] Paris, Paulin, 1905. 

At the International Congress at Milan, on accidents among the labor- 
ing class, in May, 1894, Mr. Luigi Belloc (Factory Inspector of the De- 
partment of Labor) represented Italy. He stated that the continuous 
motion of the body taxes the nervous system, causing the gravest troubles. 
The sewing-machine, which requires of the operator 40,000 movements a 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH 1 29 

day, causes in the long run abdominal and renal troubles, disarrangement ITALY 
of the menstrual function, and falling and deviations of the uterus. Func- 
tional weaknesses and paralysis are the result of the continual performance 
of the same movement. The necessity of standing or sitting for the whole 
day causes malformation of the body or curvature of the spine, as a result 
of the strained position. The attention required in watching a machine, 
especially an automatic one, is very fatiguing, on account of the large 
number of wheels operating at the same time which need attention. . . . 

Tuberculosis spreads with alarming rapidity, especially among cotton 
and wool weavers. Those whom tuberculosis spares drag along with 
anaemia, the most common malady of the women factory workers, es- 
pecially the textile workers, who are subject to long hours of labor. . . . 

For the cotton industry in particular Mr. Luigi Belloc demands the 
ten-hour day. (Pages 14-16.) 

Bericht der k. k. Gewerhe-Inspedoren iiber ihre Amtstdtigkeit im Jahre 1895. AUSTRIA 
[Reports of the {Austrian) Royal and Imperial Factory Inspectors for 
1895] Vienna, 1896. 

The most frequent cause of diapproval by the inspector lies in the 
employmient of girls between 14 and 16, not indeed on account of hard 
work, but because of excessive hours of work. This is found in many 
lines of industry . . . (flower-making, etc.). The adult women, too, 
in these lines are excessively overstrained by the unreasonably long hours, 
and their health is severely injured thereby, the more so because of arti- 
ficial light, etc., etc. (Page 38.) 

Ihid., 1896. Published 1897. It is greatly to be desired that these 
(jute) factories, where mostly women and very young men are employed, 
and where extreme attention must be continuously given to the machin- 
ery; where, moreover, the work requires almost continuous standing and 
where dust and jarring are especially marked, — should establish a shorter 
working day. By reason of the disadvantages mentioned, the hours of 
work ought to be diminished. (Page 14.) 

Ihid., 1888. Published 1899. (General remarks.) In close relation 
to the efforts made for the protection of life in industrial occupations are 
all those special provisions for minimizing special dangers arising from 
heat, dust, etc., for it must be remembered that all influences that are 
in themselves injurious, such as the constrained bodily posture, dampness, 
etc., assume a vastly greater dangerous quality by reason of the very con- 
siderable proportion of his life during which the workman is exposed to 
them. (Page 11.) 
9* 



130 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



AUSTiOA Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, 

1894. Vol. VII, Sec. V. Cher das Verhdltniss der Dauer des Arheits- 
tages lur Gesundheit des Arheiters und dessen Einfluss auf die offent- 
liche Gesundheit. [The Length of the Working Day in its Relation 
to the Workman' s Health and its Influence upon Public Health.] Dr. 
E. R. J. Krejcsi, Vice-Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce in 
Budapest. Budapest, 1896. 

All accumulated experience and evidence fully justify the conclusion 
that the length of working time is of weighty importance to the work- 
man's health and that overwork is accompanied by most harmful con- 
sequences to the organism. 

As a matter of fact, practising physicians observe among persons with 
excessive hours of work, such as bakers, tailors, sewing women, shop 
girls, etc., definite disturbances of health for which they hold the long 
hours directly responsible. And yet a direct proof of every injury result- 
ing from overwork is almost unattainable. For, connected with the 
overwork are other and related factors that are injurious, such as a fixed 
artificial posture, or dust, or poisons, insanitary shop and factory, or 
insufficient nutrition, and it is often almost impossible to separate their 
effects. Other complicating factors might also be adduced in many cases, 
such as insufficient sleep, great haste at meals, imperfect safety appliances 
in the lesser industries. Nevertheless the relation of long working hours 
to health is, in certain forms of ill health, easily demonstrable. So, for 
instance, in certain trades, definite maladies result from too long standing. 
. . . Others equally definite are caused by too long sitting. . . . and 
others are conspicuous as resulting from excessive muscular over-exertion. 
. . . Now, though we may say, in such cases, that the injuries to health 
are the direct results of standing, sitting, or lifting, there can scarcely be 
room for disagreement when we take it to be a settled fact that the under- 
lying relation of the length of the working hours to the state of the health 
is clearly established. 

Taking for granted that all other conditions (nutrition, housing, gen- 
eral sanitation, etc.) remain unchanged, this difference of time in the 
occurrence of sickness must be attributed to the excessive hours of work, 
which reach beyond the limits of endurance. (Pages 326-327.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



hJew Hampshire. House Journal. June, 1847. Report recommending 
Shortening Hours of Labor, Regulating Child Labor, and Establishing 
10-hour Day. 

Their duties do not generally require great exertion of physical strength, 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH I3I 

but are rendered fatiguing bv the constant attention required by the united 
rapid and increasing motion of the machines, attended by a constant 
noise and jar which are distracting to persons unaccustomed to the mills. 
It seems certain to the undersigned that labor of this nature cannot 
be continued any great length of time without serious injury to the health 
of the operatives. ... If the slow and fearful diseases which this mode 
of life tends to bring on are escaped, a loss of strength and activity must 
ensue from it, which may result in the perpetual evil of a sickly and 
enervated population in all the large manufacturing towns. (Page 476.) 

Massachusetts House Documents. No. 153. 1850. Minority Report Re 
Limitation of Hours of Work. 

Excessive labor not only debilitates the body, and thereby exposes it 
to disease, but also tends to exhaust the mental powers, and thus expose 
the whole moral and intellectual character to undue and dangerous 
depression. To this evil and danger the factory operatives — that large 
and valuable class of the population of this State which by their labor 
produce so large a portion of its material wealth — are especially exposed. 
(Page 19.) 



Massachusetts House Documents. No. 98. 1866. 

Dr. Jarvis, physician of Dorchester, says: 

Every man has a certain amount of constitutional force. This is his 
vital capital, which must not be diminished. Out of this comes daily a 
certain and definite amount of available force, which he may expend in 
labor of muscle or brain, without drawing on his vital capital. He may 
and should work every day and expend so much force and no more, that 
he shall awake the next morning and every succeeding morning until he 
shall be threescore and ten, and find in himself the same amount of 
available force, the same power, and do his ordinary day's work, and 
again lie down at night with his . . . constitutional force unimpaired. 
(Page 36.) 

Judging by this standard, there can be no doubt of the serious injury 
often resulting from overwork, even when no palpable evidence appears. 
(Page 36.) 

Dr. Ordway, practising physician many years (in Lawrence), has no 
hesitation in saying that mill work, long continued, is injurious to bodily 
and mental health, and materially shortens life, especially of women. 
(Page 63.) 



132 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Massachusetts Legislative Documents. Reports of Commissioners on the 

STATES ^^^^^ ^j ^^^^^^ ^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^ jg^y^ 

Workmen and . . . women are held under the present customs and 
ideas to at least five hours each half day of continuous work, often in the 
most tedious, minute, and monotonous employ. It is assumed . . . that 
they have no lower limbs to ache with swollen or ruptured veins, no deli- 
cacy of nerve, or versatility of mind, to revolt from such severity of appli- 
cation. (Pages 66-67.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1870-71. 

"The 11th hour was the worst — we are worn out and we feel that we 
can't get off as much work. That hour is a great deal worse than the 
first hour. I feel faintly when 1 come out of mill at night, and I did not 
when I worked 10 hours. That last hour is dreadful bad." An operative. 
(Page 499.) 

"Has lived in twenty different factory towns, and has observed that 
young women who work in the factories are many of them ruined in 
morals and nearly all in health. A rosy-cheeked girl put in a mill will 
begin to fade in three months." G. Bootcutter. (Page 606.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1872. Domestic 
Labor and Woman s Work. 

In the cotton mills at Fitchburg the women and children are pale, 
crooked, and sickly-looking. The women appear dispirited, and the 
children without the bloom of childhood in their cheeks, or the elasticity 
that belongs to that age. Hours, 60 to 67^ a week. (Pages 94-95.) 

Rhode Island. Governor's Message. 1875, 

Governor Henry Howard: 

It seems to me that the time has come for considering the question 
of regulating by legislation the hours of employment of women and 
children in our factories. ... I know that many regard it as wisest to 
leave such matters to their own adjustment. Protracted observation 
and some experience lead me to an opposite conclusion. Work in our 
factories is largely made up of the labor of women and children. The 
disposition of the former to sacrifice enjoyment, comfort, health, nay, 
even life itself, to the pressing demands of family necessity, is well known. 
... In trades which are mainly occupied by men, ten hours is allowed 



BAD EFFECTS OF LONG HOURS ON HEALTH 1 33 

to constitute a day's work. Why should women and children be com- united 
pelled to labor at an employment quite as trying both to brain and body, ^^^'^^^ 
and more confining than almost any other, for a longer period of time? 
Experience shows that impaired health is most frequent in those mills 
which run the greatest number of hours daily. (Pages 16-17.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1884. 

We secured the personal history of these 1032 of the whole 20,000 
working girls of Boston, a number amply sufficient for the scientific 
purposes of the investigation. (Page 5.) 

Long hours, and being obliged to stand all day, are very generally 
advanced as the principal reasons for any lack or loss of health occasioned 
by the work of the girls. (Page 69.) 



Report of the New fersey Inspector of Factories and Workshops. 1885. 

Dr. Gledden, the town physician, testified that the employees of the 
mills were not as healthy as those outside, and this he fairly attributed to 
the long hours of labor. (Page 46.) 

Report of the New York State Factory Inspector. 1887 . 

Inquiry among those females above the statutory age who worked 
twelve and fifteen hours a day in printing offices, candy factories, woolen, 
mills, and other manufacturing establishments, elicited the information 
that the women who labor these long hours were more subject to fits of 
nervous prostration and debility than those who worked the normal day 
of ten hours. (Page 28.) 

Report of Pennsylvania Factory Inspector. 1895. 

Great is my disappointment when advised of overtime, in visiting the 
premises in question, to find, out of a force of upward of a hundred or 
more, from four to ten minors are employed. Their time is at once 
curtailed, while the other goes merrily on grinding out the very lives of 
these beings called women. It may be that they were intended to fill 
the places of such, but their very industrial environment, being utterly 
slavish, soon makes of them subjects not for home grace and beauty, but 
rather a physically degenerating class fit only for treatment in the hospital 
and home. It would be interesting to secure an exact statistical record 



134 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED based upon this particular question, the effect of overtaxation upon 

women's physical health caused by long hours and arduous labor. (Pages 
17-18.) 



Report of the New York Factory Inspector. 1897. 

In our opinion there seems to be no good reason why there should be 
any age limit at all placed on the hours of labor of any working woman. 
The restrictive clause limiting the hours of toil to sixty per week should 
apply to all females irrespective of their age. 

Any woman employed at manual labor for ten consecutive hours per 
day and constantly employed, is performing a task beyond her strength, 
whether she is just under or over twenty-one years of age. (Pages 25-26.) 



Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1898. 

The long working hours, the close air of the shop, with the cold lunch 
hastily eaten, are no small factors in the rapid change of appearance and 
health many of these women and children undergo in the first few years 
of factory life. (Page 77.) 



Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries. 1902. 

The weak, physical condition of the operatives, especially the females, 
is very noticeable. (Page 378.) 

The long hours of labor, frequently ten or twelve, and the foul air of 
the workroom is most marked in its effects upon the female operatives. 
In addition to throat and lung diseases, which are almost equally prevalent 
among both sexes, the suffering of the female operatives from causes 
peculiar to the sex is very greatly aggravated by the conditions under 
which they work. (Pages 377-378.) 

A physician of high standing whose practice is largely among the 
operatives of these mills is authority for the statement that a large major- 
ity of female mill-workers are sufferers from some one or more of the 
organic complaints brought on or intensified by the conditions under 
which they work. If no such disease existed before entering the mill, 
it was almost sure to develop soon after beginning work; if it did exist 
before, it was aggravated to a degree that made them easy victims of 
consumption. 

The long hours of labor, being constantly standing, the foul air of the 
workroom, and, more than all, the ceaseless vibration of the floor from the 



INJURIES TO THE FEMALE FUNCTIONS 135 

motion of the great mass of machinery are the prime factors in producing Jnited 

^ , STATES 

these diseases, (rage 378.) 

Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1901-1902. 

A writer in the British Medical Journal (September 2, 1899), in dis- 
cussing the influence of prolonged standing in the production of women's 
diseases, declares that while only a comparatively small number of factory 
and shop girls break down at an early age, forty per cent of married women 
who have been factory or shop girls "come under medical attention for 
pelvic troubles under thirty years. The girls are broken down and 
wearied, but keep at their work by force of circumstances." (Pages 339- 
340.) 



(2) Injuries to the Female Functions and Childbirth 

The evil effect of overwork and continuous standing 
before as well as after marriage is marked and disastrous 
upon the female functions and childbirth. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of . . . great 

.... . . BRITAIN 

the Commissioners for inquiring into the Employment of Children in 
Factories . . . and Reports by the Medical Commissioners. Dr. 
Hawkins (Lancashire district). Elizabeth Taylor, Midwife .... 
9th May, 1833. 

. . . Are miscarriages more common among factory women than 
among others whom you attend? — Much more frequent among the factory 
women. . . . 

Do you fmd the children of factory women are as healthy when first 
born as those of other women? — No, certainly not; they are more delicate. 
. . . You often examine the persons of factory wives; do you often fmd 
any hurt or blemish? — I often fmd their feet and legs swelled. . . . 

Whom do you fmd most lean, the factory wives or the others whom you 
attend? — The factory wives are a good deal more lean. (Page 14.) 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIIL 1844. 

Lord Ashley: 

Many anatomical reasons are assigned by surgeons of the manufactur- 
ing towns, that "the peculiar structure of the female form is not so well 



136 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

adapted to long-continued labour and especially labour which is endured 
standing." Mr. Smith of Leeds declares: 

"This [the operation of the factory labour] occasionally produces the 
most lamentable effects in females when they are expecting to become 
mothers." 

On the anatomical difficulty of parturition, he states: 

"It is often the painful duty of the accoucheur to destroy the life of 
the child. I have seen many instances of the kind, all of which, with one 
exception, have been those of females who have worked long hours in 
factories. (Pages 1089-1090.) 

He (Mr. Saunders) often witnesses the effect of so much standing 
when parturition comes on, adding: 

"Work in the night is the most injurious; it is unnatural, and not 
adapted to the constitution of women." 

Another surgeon of great experience in Lancashire, writes to me 
that . . . 

"The effects of long-continued labour in factories become more appar- 
ent after childbirth. The infants are at birth below the average size, 
have a stunted and shrivelled appearance. . . . Miscarriages very fre- 
quent, and all the physical and surgical mischiefs of mistreated pregnancy 
— varicose veins produced by the continued evil practice — aggravated 
greatly in pregnant women. Again troublesome ulcers of the legs, arising 
from varicose veins which, in some cases, burst, and bring on a dangerous 
and sometimes fatal hemorrhage. The practice of procuring abortion 
is very frequent even among married women." 

I have, moreover, the personal testimony of several females to the truth 
of these statements they speak of — the intolerable pain in their breasts by 
such long absences from children, and the suffering of returning to work 
within ten days of confinement. (Page 1093.) 

"Very young children (says Dr. Johns) are, by the existing system, 
not sufficiently taken care of by their mothers; as regards themselves 
during gestation, and their offspring, after childbirth — the women during 
pregnancy continue as long as possible at their work." (Page 1094.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. LV . 1873. Report to the Local Govern- 
ment Board on Proposed Changes in Hours and Ages oj Employment in 
Textile Factories. J. H. Bridges, M.D., and T. Holmes. 

Experience afforded by residence in the worsted manufacturing town 
of Bradford, and extensive practice among its population during periods 
of from one to thirty-five years: 



INJURIES TO THE FEMALE FUNCTIONS 137 

A. Amongst the women of factory operatives, much more than among great 



the general population. . . . Other deranged states of a still worse 
character are present, e. g., leucorrhoea and too frequent and profuse 
menstruation. Cases also of displacement, flexions, and versions of the 
uterus, arising from the constant standing and the increased heat of and 
confinement in the mill. (Pages 39-40.) 

Signed on behalf of the Bradford Medico-Chirurgical Society, at a 
meeting held February 4, 1873. 
Sub-Committee, 

President, J. H. Bell, M.D. 

P. E. MiALL, M.R.C.S. 
Secretary, David Goyder, M.D. 

(Pages 39-40.) 

Artisans and Machinery: The Moral and Physical Condition of the Manu- 
facturing Population. P. Gaskell, Esq., Surgeon. London, John 
Parker, 1836. 

That the physical energies of the factory women are injured is proved 
by the fact that miscarriages are exceedingly common amongst them. 
We have had many opportunities of noting this circumstance in girls 
engaged in both silk and cotton mills. (Page 189.) 

History of the Factory Movement, from the Year 1802 to the Enactment of 
the Ten-hours' Bill in 1847. "Alfred." {Samuel Kydd.) Mr. 
Sadler's speech before the House of Commons, March, 1832. London, 
Simpkin, Marshall, 1857. 

. . . But again taking with me the highest medical authorities, I 
refer to the consequences of early and immoderate labor; especially at 
the period when the system rapidly attains its full development and is 
peculiarly susceptible of permanent injury. Still more are the effects felt 
when they become mothers, for which, I fear, their previous pursuits 
have little qualified them. It is in evidence that long standing has a 
known tendency — how shall I express it? — contrahere et minuere pelvem, 
and thereby to increase greatly the danger and difficulty of parturition, 
rendering embryotomy — one of the most distressing operations which a 
surgeon ever has to perform — occasionally necessary. I have communi- 
cations on this subject from persons of great professional experience; 
but still I prefer to appeal to the evidence before the public; and one 
reference shall suffice. Dr. Jones, who had practised in the neighborhood 
of certain mills, in favor of which much evidence was adduced, which 



BRITAIN 



138 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



indeed it is rarely difficult to procure, states that in the eight or ten 
years during which he was an accoucheur, he met with more cases requir- 
ing the aid of instruments (that circumstance showing them to be bad 
ones), than a gentleman of great practice in Birmingham, to whom he was 
previously a pupil, had met with in the whole course of his life. Abundance 
of evidence is before me. But I forbear. (Vol. I, Page 181.) 



The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, 
M.D., A.B., F.R.C.P. London, Percival, 1892. 

Continuous standing for hours together is a strain especially upon the 
arch of the feet and the ankle joints; a cause of weary spine and spinal 
curvature, favoring also pelvic fulness, and in the female sex, productive 
of derangements of the uterine functions and of uterine displacements. 
(Page 170.) 

Condition of tie fVorking Class in England in 1844. Frederick Engels. 
{Originally issued in Germany, 1845.) Translated by Florence 
Kelley. London, Sonnenschein, 1892. 

The influence of factory work upon the female physique also is marked 
and peculiar. The deformities entailed by long hours of work are much 
more serious among women. Protracted work frequently causes defor- 
mities of the pelvis, partly in the shape of abnormal position and develop- 
ment of the hip bones, and partly of malformation of the lower part of 
the spinal column. 

"Although," says Dr. Loudon, in his report, "no example of malfor- 
mation of the pelvis and of some other affections came under my notice, 
these things are nevertheless so common that every physician must 
regard them as probable consequences of such working hours, and as 
vouched for besides by men of the highest medical credibility." 

That factory operatives undergo more difficult confinement than other 
women is testified to by several midwives and accoucheurs, and also that 
they are more liable to miscarriage. (Pages 160-161.) 



GERMANY AmtUche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten, XXII, 1897. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

The inspector in Hesse regards a reduction of working hours to ten 
for women in textile mills as "absolutely imperative," as the continuous 
standing is very injurious to the female organism. (Page 241.) 



INJURIES TO THE FEMALE FUNCTIONS 1 39 

Die Beschdftigung Verheiratheter Frauen in Fabriken. Nach den Jahres- GERMANY 
hericUen der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten fiir das Jahr 1899 hearheitet 
im Reich samt des Innern. [The Employment of Married Women in 
Factories. From Reports of the {German) Factory Inspectors for the 
Year 1899. Compiled in the Imperial Home Office] Berlin, Decker, 
1901. 

The harm from continuous standing or sitting was repeatedly empha- 
sized. It was stated that continuous standing was extremely injurious 
for all women in the years of developing maturity, as it caused uterine 
relaxation and malpositions (falling of the womb). 

. . . The inspector from Dresden wrote: "It is an undisputed fact 
that prolonged standing as required in many lines of manufacture as 
well as continuous sitting (sewing and many trades), is a cause of impair- 
ment to health. Unmarried women are as liable as married ones to the 
ill results of long hours of sitting or standing." (Page 101.) 

In Wiirttemburg, where anaemia and disturbances of the abdominal 
organs (intestines, etc.) were widely characteristic of working women 
in all the various lines of industry, "it was found that the bent attitude 
standing up in the mills, and the equally bent attitude sitting down in 
the lace curtain factories, etc., both promoted illness. Sometimes still 
other unhealthful influences were added to these, such as continuous 
standing on wet and cold stone floors, as was the case in certain mills. 

In the report from Anhalt it was stated as an accepted fact that, if 
continuous standing or continued sitting while at work was combined with 
long hours of work, definite impairment of the health of women followed 
(varicose veins, uterine disorders, etc.). (Page 101.) 



Untersuchungen iiber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fahrikhevblkerung switzer- 
der Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss ^^^^ 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Prof, of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauer- 
Idnder, 1889. 

The high morbidity of women is not a little influenced by the frequency 
of uterine disorders. It is known that, on the whole, women are more 
subject to diseases of the genitalia than men, yet the difference shown in 
the statistics of the sick benefit funds cannot be regarded as normal. 
These disorders are not equally prevalent in all occupations, nor do they 
always appear in the same varieties. Next to the kind of employment it 
is important to know whether the workers are married or single, and have 



140 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



borne children or not. Among young unmarried workers one fmds lower 
figures, chiefly of menstrual disorders and slight catarrh. (Cotton mill 
and silk mill operatives.) The figures rise as the genital organs are more 
directly affected by the kind of work. Again, in certain industries (weav- 
ing, cotton print works), we find figures which call for serious considera- 
tion. Here the forms of disease become more threatening. Miscarriages 
are frequent, displacements and chronic metritis take a prominent place. 
If we wish to apply a remedy we must study all the circumstances which 
contribute to these abnormalities. 

First of all, as already stated, the kind of work and way in which it is 
done must not be overlooked. Pre-eminently must continuous standing, 
jarring of machinery, whirling dust, and direct or indirect pressure upon 
the abdominal organs be condemned. By the utmost possible avoidance 
of bad conditions much improvement may be reached even without ex- 
cluding women from their share of industrial work. (Pages 170-171.) 

International Congress for Labor Legislation, Zurich, 1897. Official Re- 
port of the Organiiation Committee. Die Beurteilung der Folgen der 
Kinder arheit vom Standpunkte des Aretes. [The Results of Child 
Labor as judged from the Physicians' Standpoint.] Dr. F. Gehrig, 
in Wiener Staatswissenschaftliche Studien, Bd. V., 1903. 

We may place special injuries in two groups, accordingly as work re- 
quires the sitting or standing position. 

In the first group stasis is promoted in abdominal organs by the ob- 
structed circulation and chronic constipation, hemorrhoids, and, in wo- 
men, uterine disorders follow. The fixed position leads to scolioses and 
asymmetrical thorax, curvatures of the spine, etc. The obstacles to free, 
unconstrained respiration induce pulmonary tuberculosis. With the over- 
use of certain groups of muscles distinct neuroses arise. 

It is to be borne in mind that these diseases by no means always declare 
themselves in youth; the seeds only of many ills are planted by over- 
exertion in youth, and from them develop later disease or invalidism. 
(Page 190.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1871. 

Exhaustion from overwork. In consequence of the long hours of 
labor, the great speed the machinery is run at, the large numbers of looms 
the weavers tend, and the general overtasking, so much exhaustion is 
produced in most cases that, immediately after taking supper, the tired 



INJURIES TO THE FEMALE FUNCTIONS I4I 

operatives drop to sleep in their chairs. ... 10. Predisposition to pelvic united 
disease. There appears, as far as my observation goes, quite a predis- 
position to pelvic disease among the female factory operatives, producing 
difficulty in parturition. The necessity for instrumental delivery has 
very much increased within a few years, owing to the females working in 
the mills while they are pregnant and in consequence of deformed pelvis. 
Other uterine diseases are produced, and, in other cases, aggravated in 
consequence of the same. (Pages 505-506.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1875. 

Profuse, difficult, deficient, or retarded menstruation, anaemia, chloro- 
sis, anasarca and oedema of feet, pains of back and limbs, nervous head- 
aches, hacking coughs, by-and-by tubercular symptoms, and more or 
less early decline, is the usual list and order of complaints that our errors 
of industrial employment are establishing with this proportion of our 
working world, and with their results are grafting upon our nationality to 
its steadily progressive decline and decay. (Page 70.) 

It seems to be the back that gives out. Girls cannot work more than 
eight hours, and keep it up; they know it, and they rarely will, — and 
even this seems to "pull them down," so that it is extremely rare that a 
girl continues more than a few years at the business. (Page 91.) 

Mr. B , foreman of a large printing establishment, says: "Girls 

must sit at the 'case.' I never knew but one woman, and she a strong, 
vigorous Irishwoman, of unusual height, who could stand at the case like 
a man. Female compositors, as a rule, are sickly, suffering much from 
backache, headache, weak limbs, and general 'female weakness.'" (Page 
91.) 

Miss , for several years in charge of the female department of one ; 

of the largest telegraph offices in the country, testified: "One year is as 
long as one can work in a busy office without a good vacation. The 
confined position, constipation, heat, and dizzy headache, I think, are 
the most noticeable troubles of 'lady operators' who are 'grown up.' 
The hours are too long for such strained employment. From 8 a. m. 
to 6 p. M., with only an hour for dinner, makes too long a day for the kind 
of work." (Page 96.) 

Miss J , a lady compositor, says: "We cannot stand at the 'case.' 

It increases back and head ache, and weakness of limbs, as well as a drag- 
ging weight about the hips. I have been at this work five years, but have 
been frequently obliged to give up for vacations from peculiar troubles and 
general debility. I began to menstruate when fourteen; I am now twenty- 



142 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



two. I was well until I had set type for a year, when I began to be 
troubled with difficult periods, and have been more or less ever since. 
When I go away I get better, but, as often as I return to my work, I am 
troubled again. Have wholly lost color, and am not nearly as fleshy and 
heavy as when 1 began work. I have now a good deal of pain in my chest, 
and some cough, which increases, if 1 work harder than usual. I am well 
acquainted with many other lady compositors who suffer as I do." (Pages 
91-92.) 

Miss S , a lady long in charge of the "composing-room" (female 

department) of a large printing establishment testifies: "I was myself a 
compositor, and have had scores of girls under me and with me, many of 
whom I have known intimately. I have no hesitation in saying that 1 
think I never knew a dozen lady compositors who were 'well.' Their 
principal troubles are those belonging to the sex, and great pain in back, 
limbs, and head." (Page 92.) 



(3) Injuries to the Feet and Legs from Long Standing 

Long hours of standing result in injuries to the tissues 
of the legs and feet, often persisting for years, occasioning 
much pain and in some cases total disability. Varicose 
veins and flat foot are the most common injuries. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-1832. Report from the Select 
Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

James Blundell, Esq., M.D. (Lecturer on Physiology and Midwifery 
in the School of Guy's Hospital) : 

10850. Is not the exertion necessary to sustain the erect position of the 
body for a great length of time more fatiguing than any other natural 
position ordinarily maintained, or moderate exertion equally and alter- 
nately exercising the various muscles of the body? — Decidedly it is. . . . 

1085L According to physiological principles, might the excessive 
fatigue that a person endures who has to maintain an erect position for a 
great length of time be explained and accounted for? — I think it might, 
inasmuch as the movements of the body in locomotive exercise tend 
effectually in man to help circulation, and further, the standing position 
implies that the same muscles are kept continually in action, while in 



INJURIES TO THE FEET AND LEGS I43 

the locomotive movements there are alternate changes of the operative ^^^T 

*= ^ BRITAIN 

muscles. 

10852. Is there not alternate rest and exercise in the varied movements 
of the body, which is not the case in the standing position so fully? — 
Exactly so, alternate rest and exercise of different sets of muscles. (Page 
542.) 

Thos. Hodgkin, Esq., M.D. (Physician to the London Dispensary, 
Lecturer at Guy's Hospital): 

10928. It has been asserted by witnesses before this committee, that 
diseased and ulcerated legs, especially among the female part of the opera- 
tives, have been produced; should you conceive that long standing at the 
labour in question might produce that effect? — Certainly, by interfering 
with the circulation. (Page 548.) 

John Morgan, Esq. (Surgeon to Guy's Hospital): 

10990. Should you be prepared to expect that diseases of the legs, 
especially in the female sex, would result from very long standing at 
their labour? — I should consider it as a necessary consequence. (Page 
553.) 

Benjamin Collins Brodie, Esq., F.R.S. . . . (Surgeon of St. George's 
Hospital): 

11098. Is not the maintenance of the erect position of the body fatigu- 
ing when continued for a great length of time? — It is more fatiguing than 
a recumbent or sitting posture, inasmuch as more muscular exertion is 
necessary to maintain it. (Page 565.) 

11110. Many of the operatives, it is said, especially the females, suifer 
from this labour other effects, namely, diseases in the legs? — Diseases in 
the legs generally, and especially varicose veins and ulcers of the legs are 
more likely to occur in persons who are constantly in an erect posture. 
I observe in this town those who are a great deal in an erect posture, 
especially if they carry weights, become flat-footed, which is a very dis- 
tressing complaint. (Page 566.) 

Sir William Blizard, F.R.S. (Surgeon to the London Hospital and 
Lecturer on Surgery, Anatomy, and Physiology): 

11200. May the committee ask you, appealing now to the principles 
of your profession, whether it does not require some considerable degree 
of muscular exertion to maintain the erect position for a great length of 
time together? — No doubt of it, and it is a position which, if long main- 
tained, is unfavorable in many respects, and leading to consequences very 
serious. (Page 572.) 

Sir George Leman Tuthill, F.R.S. (Physician to the Westminster 
Hospital and Bethlem Hospital): 



144 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT 11307. Is the muscular eflfort to sustain for a great length of time 

BRITAIN 

together the erect position of the body very fatiguing? — Certainly. 
(Page 580.) 

11308. So that such labour, so pursued, would be still more exhaust- 
ing?— I think it would. (Page 580.) 

Joseph Henry Green, Esq., F.R.S. (A surgeon of St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital and Professor of Surgery at King's College) : 

11375. Does not the maintaining of an erect position of the body itself 
induce considerable fatigue if long endured? In order to maintain an 
erect position of the body, it is necessary that a muscular action should 
be constantly exerted, therefore it necessarily induces fatigue. (Page 587.) 

James Guthrie, Esq., F.R.S. (Vice-President of Royal College of 
Surgeons, surgeon to the Westminster Hospital and to Westminster 
Eye Hospital): 

11474. Is not the exertion necessary to sustain the erect position for a 
great length of time more fatiguing than any other natural posture ordi- 
narily maintained, or moderate exertion equally and alternately exercising 
the muscles of the body? — Unquestionably. (Page 595.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of the 
. . . Commissioners for Inquiring into the Employment of Children in 
Factories and . . . Reports by the Medical Commissioners. 

Sir David Barry's report (Scotland): 

In examining the feet and ankles of mill girls, I find, that in reference 
to their being swelled or otherwise a good deal depends upon the hour of 
the day at which they are examined. Most of them acknowledge that 
their feet are more or less swelled towards night, particularly in the sum- 
mer months. (Page 8.) 

Both adult males and females whose work obliges them to stand con- 
stantly are more subject to varicose veins of the lower extremities, and to 
a larger and more dangerous extent than ever I have witnessed even in 
foot soldiers. The females are more subject than males to evening swell- 
ings of the feet and ankles. (Page 73.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. LV. 1873. Report to the Local Govern- 
ment Board on Proposed Cha^iges in Hours and Ages of Employment 
in Textile Factories. J. H. Bridges, M.D., and T. Holmes. 

Experience afforded by residence in the worsted manufacturing town 
of Bradford and extensive practice among its population during periods of 
from one to thirty-five years: 



INJURIES TO THE FEET AND LEGS I45 

. . . Oedema and varicose veins of the legs are common amongst female great 
mill-workers of middle age. Britain 

Signed on behalf of the Bradford Medico-Chirurgical Society, at a 
meeting held February 4, 1873. 

Sub-Committee, 

President, J. H. Bell, M.D. 

P. E. MiALL, M.R.C.S. 
Secretary, David Goyder, M.D. 
(Pages 39-40.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report from the Select 
Committee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of University of Oxford, Fellow of 
College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons. Attached 
to London Hospital and Brompton Hospital: 

5284. Would prolonged standing have an injurious effect upon the 
female constitution? — I have no doubt it has. ... I have no doubt it 
causes varicose veins. (Page 215.) 



The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, M.D., 
A.B., F.R.C.P., Late Milroy Lecturer at Royal College. London, 
Percival, 1892. 

When insufficient muscular activity is associated with almost constant 
standing, the increased difficulty to the return of the blood from the 
lower limbs is the most pronounced feature, and productive of varicose 
veins, and ulcers and thickened knee and ankle joints. (Page 19.) 

Workpeople obliged to stand long, and especially when this happens in 
early youth, lose the arch of the foot and become flat-footed, with de- 
formed ankles and often "knock knees." (Page 558.) 



British Association for the Advancement of Science. 1903. Women's 
Labour: Third Report of the Committee . . . appointed to Investigate 
the Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labour. 

In so far as the law has checked, and this it certainly has done in a 
■considerable degree, the excessively long night and day turns of work 
(in laundries) at the middle and end of the week, gaiii must have accrued 
lo the workers in lessening the number of cases of complete exhaustion. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



146 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



. . . Greater liability of laundresses, as compared with women of occupa- 
tions treated in those infirmaries, to ulcerated legs and to phthisis. . . . 
The figures supplied by the records of the cases attended by the Kensing- 
ton District Nursing Association show a large proportion of ulcerated legs 
and of forms of internal disease aggravated by standing for long hours. 
(Pages 359-360.) 



GERMANY Die Beschdftigung Verheirateter Frauen in Fdbriken. Nach den Jahres- 
Berichten der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten fiir das Jahr 1899 bearbeiiet 
im Reich samt des Innern. Berlin, 1901. [The Employment of Mar- 
ried Women in Factories. From Reports oj the {German) Factory 
Inspectors for the year 1899. Compiled in the Imperial Home Office^ 
Berlin, Decker, 1901. 

Other inspectors emphasized the injurious effects of continuous stand- 
ing. The frequent occurrence of flat foot was ascribed to this, and the 
frequency of displaced uterus in working women was also attributed largely 
to this cause. 

The inspector from Alsace, who personally interviewed the women 
operatives, found that "varicose veins were frequent, rubber stockings 
were often necessary, and weariness and inability to do the household 
work after returning from the factory were almost universal even among 
the younger women. This weariness, often accompanied by backache 
. . . often developed into positive incapacity for work and physical dis- 
ability." (Page 102.) 



Jahresbericht der Grossherioglich Badischen Fabrikinspektion fiir das Jahr 
1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1902.] Karlsruhe, 
Thiergarten, 1903. 

The direct injuries to health from industrial work are unmistakably 
shown in certain individual kinds of work, though ordinarily difficult to 
prove. 

Thus the factory physician of two large mills states that the employees 
suffer much more from flat foot and other troubles of the feet than other 
classes of the population, and he ascribes it to the long-continued standing 
and walking during work, which is too much for young people in the period 
of development, and which, aside from specified troubles, undoubtedly 
causes the rapid fading of the women. (Page 26.) 



INJURIES TO THE FEET AND LEGS I47 

Handhuch der Arheiterwohlfahrt. Bd. I. [Handbook of the General Wei- Germany 
fare of the Working Classes. Vol. I.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. 
Beschddigung der Arbeiter bet der Arbeit. {Injuries of Occupation.] 
Dr. Ascher. Stuttgart, 1902. 

Widely prevalent is the inflammation of the instep leading to flat-foot, 
the result of continuous standing or walking, and found especially among 
waiters, shopboys, bakers, etc. Continuous standing, especially when 
united to severe exertion, as by smiths, laundresses, etc., produces also 
varicose veins. Through the long-enforced standing only certain muscle 
groups are brought into action, while the large muscles of the lower ex- 
tremities are inactive. There follows an enlargement of the spaces be- 
tween skin and muscles, a knotting of the large veins of the legs; resulting 
in congestion of the blood and tedious inflammatory process. (Leg ulcers.) 
Another result of great exertion of the abdominal muscles is rupture (her- 
nia). (Page 493.) 

Untersuchungen iiber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fabrikbevolkerung SWITZER- 
der Schweii. [An Investigation of the Health of Factory Workers in 
Switzerland.] Dr. F. Schuler, Factory Inspector, and Dr. A. E. 
BuRCKHARDT, Prof. of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, Sauerldnder, 1889. 

Continuous standing must always be regarded as injurious to health. 
(Page 131.) 

National Child Labor Committee. New York. Proceedings of the Fifth States 
Annual Conference. Chicago, III. 1909. Some Effects of Improper 
Posture in Factory Labor. Albert H. Freiberg, M.D., Cincinnati, 
Ohio. 

Muscular exercise is beneficial. Exercise is our only means of strength- 
ening the muscles, of encouraging their development, but the building up 
of a muscle which is actively growing and developing must be accomplished 
by exercises which are not too severe, which are not too long continued, 
and which are of constantly varying character. 

Furthermore, the muscle which carries out exercises must be given 
frequent periods of rest, during which it may recover; it should be given 
an opportunity to build up again that which has been consumed by 
use. . . . 

. . . That which is unfortunate in factory employment as far as 
purely physical effects upon the muscles are concerned, is the fact that a 
muscle must perform its functions for a long period of time without the 



UNITED 
STATES 



148 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



opportunity of relaxing, without the opportunity of recovering. When a 
muscle has performed its function up to a certain point, we experience the 
sensation which we speak of commonly as fatigue. Fatigue means that 
there is an accumulation in the muscle of the waste products of its use, 
which have not yet been carried away and replaced by new material. If 
we continue to use a muscle far beyond the point of fatigue repeatedly, 
there results in that muscle in the course of time instead of further up- 
building, a degeneration and the result of such excess fatigue is the final 
weakening of a muscle which, if treated properly, would on the contrary 
grow stronger continuously. (Page 106.) 



(4) Injuries to Eyesight 

Serious injury to the eyes results also from excessive 
working hours. The danger of eye-strain from overlong 
hours and close application is intensified by the lack of 
proper and adequate lighting of workrooms. Shorter work- 
ing hours not only relieve the strain upon the eyes, but 
diminish the necessary time for working with artificial 
light. 



ITALY Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin. 1896. 

Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

Rest has such an eifect upon vision that some workmen, such as printers, 
tailors, and shoemakers, after their Sunday rest, see very well for several 
days; but in the middle of the week the symptoms of asthenopia recom- 
mence; and so troublesome are they that the sufferers have to cease work 
and go to the doctor, complaining not only of obscurity of vision, but of 
pain extending from their eyes to the frontal and occipital regions of the 
head. (Page 139.) 

Fatigue of the eyes in perception of the colour has been thoroughly 
studied by Goethe (Zur Farbenlehre, 1812). 

From his work on colours I shall quote some paragraphs which deal 
specially with ocular fatigue. 

We have all tried the experiment of looking at the sun, or gazing 
fixedly on the flame of a candle, and then shutting our eyes. We are 



INJURIES TO EYESIGHT I49 

all aware that the eye retains an image of a circle, which is at first bright italy 
with a pale-yellow centre, but quickly becomes rose-coloured around the 
edges. 

After a time, this red increasing towards the centre covers the whole 
circle and at last the bright central point. No sooner, however, is the 
whole circle red than the edge begins to be blue and the blue gradually 
incroaches inward upon the red. When the whole is blue the edge be- 
comes dark and colorless. The image then becomes gradually fainter and 
at the same time diminishes in size. (Pages 229-230.) 

Goethe has likewise pointed out the effect of debility upon vision: 
"In passing from bright daylight to a dusky place we distinguish nothing 
at first; by degrees the eye recovers its susceptibility: strong eyes sooner 
than weak ones; the former in a minute, while the latter may require 
seven or eight minutes." 

This observation of Goethe's as to longer duration of fatigue phe- 
nomena in enfeebled persons is of great importance in our present study. 
(Page 230.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1864. Report oj Commissioners g^^jj 
on Children's Employment. 

. . . Medical testimony to be found in the evidence in the Second 
Report of the Children's Employment Commissions, on the effects of late 
hours amongst all sorts of female employments, on the eye, where vision 
has to be concentrated on minute objects under artificial light: 

"After long work," says Mr. Lawson, "the eye becomes fatigued, the 
strain is relaxed, and the image, being thrown slightly out of focus, appears 
indistinct. A continuance of work without resting the eyes, causes a com- 
plete loss of the object on which the eye is fixed." (Page 186.) 

Etude sur V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generate FRANCE 
de V Adulte. \Study oj the Effect of the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Dr. Ilia Sachnine. Lyon, 1900. 

Bocci has studied the influence of fatigue on human vision. He holds 
that in fatigue of the eye and its attachments there are two distinct factors, 
namely, purely muscular fatigue and weariness of the nerve centres. In 
a series of experiments with normal individuals who were fatigued he 
found a diminution of keenness of vision, of refraction, of accommodation, 
of impressionability of the retina, of equilibrium and of muscular co- 
ordination. (Page 59.) 



150 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Handhuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Bd. I. [Handbook of the General Wel- 
fare of the Working Classes. Vol. I.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. 
Beschddigungen der Arbeiter bei der Arbeit. [Injuries of Occupation.] 
Dr. AscHER. Stuttgart, 1902. 

Over-exertion of different organs: 

The eye: 

Puddlers, glassblowers, and others whose eyes are continually exposed 
to extreme heat and light not only suffer greatly from inflammation of the 
connective tissues of the eyes, but also frequently from cataract. . . . 
Shortsightedness was found in a great number of cases among the darners 
of a worsted mill the result of the spasmodic accommodation of the eyes, 
as well as inflammation of the conjunctiva; that is the result of over- 
strained eyes in many occupations, especially those carried on in artificial 
or in poor light — the remedy lies in improving lighting facilities and in 
shortening the working hours. (Page 492.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health. 1906. Report on the 
Sanitary Conditions of Factories, Workshops, and other Establishments. 

Poor light is itself a factor of no mean consequence in reducing the 
physiological resistance to disease. It may be a concomitant of a number 
of other unsanitary influences which affect the health of the worker, as, 
for example, in the weaving and spinning rooms; or it may be the prin- 
cipal factor, as in web drawing. Apparently too little thought has been 
given, in mill construction, to providing for light in accordance with the 
kind of work to be done in a given room. Many rooms are of old con- 
struction, with comparatively low ceilings, small windows, and small 
panes of glass. Some of these rooms are narrow, and admit fair light from 
the sides; but some are wide, and some are basement rooms, which lack 
both an ample supply and an even distribution of light. 

Aside from the question of mill construction, two important factors 
contribute to poor light in a large number of rooms, viz.: (1) neglect 
to keep the ceiling and walls clean and white; and (2) infrequent washing 
of windows, allowing them to go unwashed in some instances for several 
years. It is frequently the case that prismatic glass of different kinds 
and sizes is introduced into poorly lighted rooms; but unless this glass is 
kept reasonably clean, it is of little value. In poorly constructed and 
neglected rooms, with or without prismatic glass, artificial light is not 
uncommonly used even on bright, sunny days in the late morning or early 
afternoon hours; and in such rooms gas jets are as likely to be found as in- 
candescent bulbs. Even if artificial light is not used until the late after- 



INJURIES TO OTHER ORGANS I5I 

noon hours, there is then much variation as to the time and method of united 
lighting and the kind of light in use. In some instances the light should ^■'•^'^^^ 
be turned on half an hour, or longer, before the engineer sees fit to do so; 
yet the employees during this time are supposed to continue their work 
with the same degree of accuracy and rapidity as with good light. 

It is a well-established fact that either the overuse of the eyes, or the 
use of eyes under bad conditions, may give rise to eye fatigue or to eye 
strain; and many eye specialists believe that at least 80 to 90 per cent of 
headaches are dependent upon eye strain. 

With these facts in mind, it is impossible to ignore the probability that 
many individuals working by gas light, or even electric light, in dirty, 
unpainted, overheated rooms, with impure air and excessive moisture, 
for ten hours a day or merely for the last two hours during the day, use 
up a great deal of nervous energy, and suffer from eye fatigue, or eye 
strain, and its consequences. (Pages 470-471.) 



(5) Injuries to other Organs 

Whenever the nature of a worker's employment or the 
position required by the work makes particular demands 
upon any organ of the body, that organ or part of the 
body first tends to become overstrained. 

Excessive length of hours intensifies such overuse of par- 
ticular organs or parts of the body in the different trades, 
and only the establishment of shorter hours can lessen the 
danger of such overstrain. 

Sixth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Vienna, 1887. land^^^" 
Part XIV, Vol. I -XIV. Sec. on Hygiene. Fahrikhygiene und 
Fahrikgeset^gehung. [Factory Hygiene and Legislation.] Dr. Frido- 
LiN ScHULER, Swiss Factory Inspector. Vienna, 1887. 

Far less conspicuous is a third set of factors which exert a deleterious 
influence on health and so threaten the well-being of workers, namely, the 
excessive muscular exertion demanded by modern forms of industry, the 
strain on special organs, the one-sided muscular activity resulting from 
continuous performance of the same motions. These are especially no- 
ticeable in their effect upon women. (Page 19.) 

There can be no doubt that factory work for women is, broadly speak- 



152 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



GERMANY 



ing, undesirable, and must be regarded as an evil resulting from the 
social adjustment. (Pages 29-30.) 

Handbuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Bd. I. [Handbook of the General Wel- 
fare of the Working Classes. Vol. I.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dammer. 
Beschddigungen der Arbeiter bei der Arbeit. [Injuries of Occupation.] 
Dr. AscHER. Stuttgart, 1902. 

Overexertion of muscles, sinews, and joints leads to rupture of muscles 
and ligaments, or to acute or chronic inflammations such as the "house- 
maid's knee," etc. Continuous overexertion of single groups of muscles 
induces permanent deformities of the skeleton (wry-neck, spinal curva- 
ture). (Page 493.) 

General overexertion of the body, and insufficient nourishment, rest, 
and sleep, repairing only imperfectly the expended energy, lead to anaemia, 
or to nervous disorders and insanities. Overexertion of individual parts 
brings atrophy of the part in question, with or without preceding affec- 
tions of the nervous system. (Pages 495-496.) 

Zeitschrift fiir Gewerbehygiene, Unfallverhiitung, und Arbeiierwohlfabrts 
Einrichtungen. Bd. XIV. 1907. Gewerbehygiene und Unfallver- 
hiitung. [Industrial Hygiene and the Prevention of Accidents.] Dr. 
Werner Heffter, Medical Officer. Vienna, Steiner, 1907. 

The injuries arising from physical overstrain are of quite another kind 
than those previously described (dust-poisons, etc.), as they may lead to 
general physical enfeeblement and also to definite local damage, as in the 
case of individual organs. Dangers of the kind first mentioned arise from 
excessive length of working hours, and are especially ruinous to youthful 
workers and to women. Hard work, such as lifting and carrying heavy 
loads, injures the body by promoting herniae, straining muscles, and bring- 
ing on cardiac disorders and lung diseases. Continuous pressure on some 
one part of the body induces swellings, inflammations, boils, and abscesses. 
A bent, or tense, or unnatural position of the body develops spinal de- 
formities and alterations of internal organs; continuous sitting or standing 
result in abdominal disorders among women. (Page 56.) 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Berlin, 1907 . 
Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermildung durch Berufsarbeit. [Fatigue result- 
ing from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908. 

During the activity of work the blood current is so distributed that the 
muscular fibres in action, also the brain and the skin, receive a larger blood 



INJURIES TO OTHER ORGANS I 53 

supply than usual. The abdominal viscera, and especially the intestines, Germany 
on the contrary, become anasmic, as the intestines part most readily with 
their blood supply, and the increased demands of the active muscles are 
met by a corresponding diminution of the intestinal circulation. It 
follows that, at a time of continuous physical exertion, the secretions of 
the intestinal glands and the processes of absorption of the contents of the 
digestive tract into the blood are retarded, and, if physiological limits in 
this process are overpassed, permanent injury to the digestive organs 
results, and anaemia, chlorosis, neurasthenia, or other ills are permanently 
and unavoidably established. (Page 595.) 

Fatigue, which, as has already been said, is the natural sequence of 
all exertion, shows itself first locally and then generally. The local 
effects are not confined entirely nor even chiefly to the muscular structures 
that are directly in use, but occur pre-eminently in those accessory muscles 
which are overstrained by work. This is to be ascribed to the fact that 
static work is more fatiguing than dynamic activity. The baker who has 
kneaded bread all night in a bent attitude, complains of pains in the legs; 
the shoemaker, of pain in the back; the violin player, of cramps in the 
left hand, etc., etc. (Page 598.) 

When fatigue becomes more intense it is overfatigue. This is also, at 
first, of local extent. So may acute inflammatory processes result from 
the overuse of single muscles, tendons, and joints . . . such are the rheu- 
matic disorders of miners. . . . 

As a result of local overstrain may be found many abnormal conditions 
. . . here must be included dilatation and hypertrophy of the heart . . . 
the right side of the heart, by reason of its thinner walls, is especially 
affected. (Page 600.) 

Fmally, overfatigue involves the whole body sympathetically, mani- 
festing itself chiefly in disturbances of the digestion, anaemia, neuroses of 
various forms, and chronic diseases, especially of the heart. It may also 
be accepted as positive that physical overwork encourages the premature 
development of arterio-sclerosis. (Page 601.) 

As, in the case of poisonous trades the most important thing is to 
recognize the earliest symptoms of poisoning, so, in regard to physi- 
cal and mental strain it is of the utmost importance to detect at the 
outset symptoms of overstrain; first the disturbances of nutrition 
and of individual organs, next the anaemia, neuroses, etc., etc. (Page 
611.) 



154 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELGroM Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 

1903. Vol. V, Section IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des 
methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres 
dans les diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences 
physiologiques et medicales peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel on tel mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fa- 
tigue, its forms and degrees in different occupations, he studied hy physio- 
logical methods? JVhat arguments may physiological or medical sciences 
bring to bear in favor of various modes of industrial organisation?] 
Dr. Jean DeMoor, University of Brussels. Brussels, 1903. 

Labor accelerates greatly the respiratory processes: it produces breath- 
lessness by a true poisoning process, and may, with more or less complete 
persistence of this condition, bring on pulmonary emphysema. 

Muscular or neuro-muscular fatigue reacts upon the digestive tract; 
it provokes loss of appetite and various functional disorders; it influences 
thermogenesis and easily induces hyperthermia (excessive rise of body 
temperature). Physical overwork favors the invasion of pathogenic 
bacteria, as human experience proves and as Charrin and Roger's experi- 
ments have demonstrated. It also lowers human resistance to sunstroke 
and to the action of extreme cold. (Page 9.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Instruction. Port- 
land, Me., 1895. The Relation of Fatigue to Social and Educational 
Progress. Henry S. Baker, Ph.D. Boston, American Institute of In- 
struction, 1895. 

In cases of long-continued and extreme fatigue the condition of the 
system resembles that of typhoid fever in its weakness, without, of course, 
the characteristic lesions of that disease. But fever may exist, and also 
what is known as irritable heart. Many times the fever of fatigue is 
erroneously classed as abortive typhoid, bilious, etc. (Pages 34-35.) 



Nervous and Mental Diseases. Archibald Church, M.D., Professor of 
Nervous and Mental Diseases and Medical Jurisprudence in the North- 
western University Medical School, etc., and Frederick Peterson, 
M.D., President of the State Commission in Lunacy, New York, etc. 
Philadelphia, 1901. 

Many occupations requiring the constant repetition of certain precise 
muscular movements may, eventually, through overuse and fatigue, give 



RELATION BETWEEN FATIGUE AND DISEASES 1 55 

rise to disturbances of muscular control, for the manoeuvre in question, united 
The conditions may be manifest as pain, tremor, weakness, or cramp, but 
usually these are variously combined in different cases. This group of 
motor disturbances is also called occupation spasms or occupation neu- 
roses. (Page 544.) 

Among the occupation spasms more commonly encountered are the 
cramps of violin and pianoforte players, telegraphers' cramp, seamstress' 
cramp, and hammer cramp in smiths and artisans using the hammer. 
Artists, flower-makers, turners, watchmakers, knitters, engravers, masons 
in using the trowel, sailors from pulling on ropes, treadlers, compositors, 
enamellers, cigarette-makers, shoemakers, milkers, money-counters, letter- 
sorters, and players on various musical instruments including drummers, 
comprise the list given by Gowers. 

It has been noted in a shoe salesman from the stooping position needed 
in putting on shoes, . . . and in various factory employees who inces- 
santly use the same movement in feeding or attending some machines. 
(Page 551.) 



Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 75. March, 1908. 
Industrial Hygiene. George M. Kober, M.D., LL.D. 

Occupations Involving Constrained Attitudes. 

The effects of a constrained position, combined with a sedentary life, 
are very injurious. This is especially seen in weavers, shoemakers, en- 
gravers, watchmakers, tailors, lithographers, etc., all of whom are obliged 
to assume a more or less constrained attitude, which interferes with a 
proper distribution of the blood supply and is liable to be followed by 
internal congestions. But perhaps the greatest harm results from deficient 
movement of the chest and consequent interference with normal respira- 
tion. As a matter of fact, many of these artisans suffer from phthisis, 
constipation, dyspepsia, and hemorrhoids, and all have a low average 
duration of life. (Page 522.) 



(6) Relation between Fatigue and Diseases 
(a) General Predisposition 

Exhaustion from excessive working hours not only lowers 
the general health and vitality of overworked persons, 
but renders them peculiarly susceptible to general diseases. 



156 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Since immunity from disease is due chiefly to the organ- 
ism's powers of resistance, it follows that overtaxed indi- 
viduals must succumb more readily than those who are 
not handicapped by overstrain and unrepaired fatigue. 

am^N British Sessional Papers. Vol XV. 1831-32. Report from the Select 

Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." Charles Turner Thackrah, 
Esq., General Practitioner in Medicine and Surgery at Leeds, author of 
"On the Effects of Arts and Trades on Health and Longevity." 

10485. . . . Mills in general do not produce immediate and direct mor- 
tality; their chief effect on the operatives, in my opinion, is the under- 
mining the health, the destroying the constitution, and the rendering 
people liable to attacks of disease to which they would not have been 
subject, or under which they would not have succumbed if they had been 
in other situations. With few exceptions, the diseases developed in mills 
are chronic rather than acute. (Page 513.) 

10489. Will you please to state to this committee what you conceive 
to be the general effects of labour too long continued in the atmosphere of 
mills and factories, generally considered, leaving out of the question any 
particular dusty manufacture? — I should say, a reduction of vital power 
proportionate to the length of that confinement, and with this reduction 
of vital power a series of evils to the constitution; chronic maladies, and 
an inability to resist acute ones, and a shortening of life. (Page 514.) 

10490. And in the case of attacks of acute disease, you do not think 
the constitution under such circumstances is as capable of resistance? — 
Decidedly not. (Page 514.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of the . . . 
Commissioners for inquiring into the Employment of Children in Fac- 
tories . . . and Reports by the Medical Commissioners. Medical 
Reports by Dr. Loudon. 

Evidence of Francis Sharp, at Leeds, member of College of Surgeons in 
London, student of medical profession for fourteen years, house surgeon of 
Leeds Infirmary for nearly four years: 

"The nervous energy of the body I consider to be weakened by the 
very long hours, and a foundation laid for many diseases. . . . Were it 
not for the individuals who join the mills from the country, the factory 
people would soon be deteriorated." (Pages 12, 13.) 



RELATION BETWEEN FATIGUE AND DISEASES 1 57 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from the Select Com- GREAT 

• BRITAIN 

mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

6. . . Sir W. MacCormac stated that "There is no doubt in my mind 
that such long hours (it speaks of an average of fourteen hours per day) 
must contribute to the incidence of disease; that it must lower the general 
vitality of persons so engaged and render them more liable than they 
otherwise would be to attacks of different forms of disease. These hours, 
too, for the most part, are worked in an atmosphere very prejudicial to 
health, and we know how largely the air so contaminated contributed to the 
production of various forms of disease in which tubercle, for instance, and 
manifold forms of disease in which tubercle manifests itself, and that other 
disease of great cities (rickets) has some part of its origin from this cause." 

7. Furthermore, he urged on us that the evil is one which increases 
as time runs on; "it is gradual and progressive in its effects, and it goes 
on, I am afraid, in a cumulative degree," 

8. Sir W. Selby Church, the president of the College of Physicians, 
gave similar evidence. (Pages v-vi.) 

. . . Dr. Shanks writes: "Of the diseases met with in practice here 
amongst shopkeepers and their assistants, chest diseases are the most 
common. The next in order of occurrence is that of sore throats, and the 
third flat feet and weakening of the ankles. These three conditions are 
certainly aggravated by the long hours spent at work. The chest ail- 
ments are invariably tuberculosis such as apical phthisis. This condition 
is most obstinate to treat, and nothing short of total suspension of work en- 
ables any progress in combating this terrible disease. Of the cause of such 
a disease there can be no doubt whatever that long hours spent in shops 
. . . prone or not to such complaints, tend to bring about a condition of 
the body suitable to the inroads of the tubercle bacilli." (Pages 75-76.) 

IVitness, Sir W. MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons : 

2466. . . . The physical fatigue, as well as other causes, induces various 
forms of disease, especially in younger women, which I should think such 
hours as you mention would largely contribute to. . . . (Page 120.) 



Revue Internationale de Sociologie. Nov. 1895. Le Travail Humain et ITALY 
ses Lois. [The Laws of Human fVork.] Francesco S. Nitti, Uni- 
versity of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere. 

It may be that the workman can continue working for a long time 
without feeling the harmful effects of fatigue. But, after he has lost a 



158 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY certain amount of his organic substance he no longer possesses the neces- 

sary resistance to external conditions and he is exposed to all sorts of ills. 
Fatigue constitutes a permanent predisposition to all diseases. . . . (Page 
1035.) 

Many prevalent maladies arise from nothing else than a genuine over- 
strain, the result of exhausting and burdensome toil, which predisposes 
the worker to fall a victim to disease. 

Too much importance has at times been attached to exterior conditions 
of work, and too little to the power of resistance of the worker. The 
reports of factory inspectors have, however, often pointed out that, where- 
ever the work is too prolonged and degenerates into fatigue, the salubrity 
of the surroundings does not suffice to guard the worker against the re- 
sults of overwork and exhaustion. (Page 1035.) 

Crichton, even in his time, showed in what a sinister fashion fatigue 
acted upon the sensibility and upon alertness, and proved that it was the 
predisposing cause of disease. (Page 1037.) 



FRANCE 



De la Fatigue et de son Influence Pathogenique. {Fatigue and its Patho- 
genic Influence.] Dr. M. Carrieu, University of Montpellier. Paris, 
Bailliere et Fils, 1878. 

The pathogenic role of fatigue is so imperfectly known and so differ- 
ently estimated that in beginning its study it is necessary to reach a clear 
idea of what fatigue is before going on to examiite those diseases in whose 
origin it is concerned. (Page 59.) 

Like many other causes, fatigue does not always act in an identical 
way in the production of disease, nor play the same pathogenic part. 
In brief, the result depends also on the illness that develops and upon the 
organism in question; it is therefore evident that it will vary according to 
the kind of illness and condition of the patient. 

It is not, indeed, that transitory state, to which the cessation of activity 
puts an end, that induces illness. This state simply indicates the need 
of rest, as hunger indicates the need of food. But if these appeals are not 
attended to, if these needs are not satisfied or only partly so, then it 
comes about that we have morbid troubles, provokied on one hand by an 
exaggerated functional over activity, and on the other by defective repara- 
tion. (Page 60.) 

A special pathogenic cause does not always give the same results, nor 
always act in the same way: an entire regiment is subjected to cold; it 
might be supposed that this would have an identical effect on all the men, 
but two will have pneumonia, ten bronchitis, fifteen rheumatism, and the 



RELATION BETWEEN FATIGUE AND DISEASES 1 59 

greatest number will not be affected. This comparison serves to show France 
how, under the influence of fatigue, we may expect to see a variety of 
diseases appear. 

In some cases it will be simply a predisposing cause; its part is reduced 
to a minimum. Nevertheless it is there; compare for instance the re- 
sistance of the vigorous individual to malarial poison with that of the un- 
fortunate, exhausted by severe toil; whose excessive tissue waste cannot 
be repaired even by an ample food supply. There we have a general 
predisposition to disease. (Page 61.) 

Fatigue seems sometimes to have closer connections with the outbreak 
of illness, without its influence being precisely definable. Again, there 
are cases where the pathogenic role of fatigue is more precise and impor- 
tant, so that one may even say, given certain personal predispositions, that 
fatigue will determine the development of definite diseases. . . . 

But in general, a thorough study of pathogenesis shows that fatigue 
is not one of those etiological agents whose powerful action imprints upon 
the organism such an injury that a definite disease is sure to follow. How 
far removed, for instance, is the insidious effect that we have traced, from 
the active and almost certain effect of poisons? . . . That the germ of ^ 

smallpox alone is capable of producing smallpox no one will deny. Yet 
how different are the variolas that occur in exhausted overworked in- 
dividuals and those which are not complicated by fatigue or any other 
depressing secondary cause. (Page 63.) 

If fatigue IS not a powerful cause in the production of disease, it is so 
in engendering superadded elements which are sometimes of capital im- 
portance. 

Disease is not an entity always identical with itself. The simplicity of 
doctrinal description is often lost in the presence of the patient. And it 
is upon the patient and not on the illness, that fatigue exerts its action. 
(Page 63.) 

Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^] Germany 
Edited by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgenieine Gewerbehygiene und 
Fabrikgesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legis- 
lation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

It is an uncontested fact that all detrimental conditions of factory 
work — whether they arise from length of working hours or burden of 
work, or from the close proximity of many persons in one room, or from 
the special so-called occupation diseases, — become obvious just so much 
the sooner and so much the more permanently as the individuals in ques- 



6o 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY tion are less resistant. Thus, of all the individuals engaged in a certain 
industry (no matter whether it is a question of handling poison or dust- 
creating materials or of working with irritants, or of the weather and bad 
air, or of unnatural positions or overexertion of special groups of muscles) 
— of all these persons some will not suffer in health, while others will 
suffer after the lapse of some years. Still others in a much shorter time 
display all the well-known mischievous effects in typical forms, either as 
poisoning or as diseases of specially taxed or specially weak organs, or as 
characteristic crippling and deformity. 

The explanation of this is, not that the first and second groups were less 
exposed or knew better how to avoid the dangers, but that they were 
better protected than the last group. This protection is partly inherited 
and constitutional, based on the strength of individual organs, and is 
partly the result of the whole standard of living. . . . The more favorable 
these social factors and the more obedient to hygienic laws the whole mode 
of life, the greater the resisting power of the whole organism and its sep- 
arate organs will be. The more unfavorable those conditions are, the 
less resistant is the organism. . . . (Pages 1-3.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Massachusetts House Documents. 1866. No. 98. Report of Special 
Commission on the Hours of Labor and the Condition and Prospect^ of 
the Industrial Classes. 

(Specific) cases are not necessary to show the injurious effect of constant 
labor at long hours. . . . There may be serious evils from constant and 
exhausting labor, that do not show themselves in any positive, clearly 
defined disease; while nevertheless the vital forces of the whole man, 
physical and mental, are very greatly impaired. (Pages 35-36.) 



Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 75. 
Industrial Hygiene. Geo. M. Kober, M.D., LL.D. 



March, 1908. 



Measures for the Protection of Wage-earners: 

One of the important predisposing causes to disease is overwork or 
fatigue, because the accumulation of waste products in the blood, from 
muscular wear and tear, together with the expended nervous energy, 
combine to render the system more susceptible to disease. Excessive 
work is inimical to health, and long hours and hard work are calculated 
to diminish the general power of resistance, and thus bring about physical 
deterioration. Hence the necessity of laws regulating the hours of labor 
and the enforcement of a day of rest as contemplated by the Sunday laws. 
(Page 536.) 



FATIGUE AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES l6l 

(b) Fatigue and Infectious Diseases 

Since overfatigue predisposes to the infectious as well 
as to general diseases, it constitutes a danger to the public 
health through the spread of such infections. Excessive 
working hours, therefore, which induce overfatigue, are a 
menace not only to the individual but to the public. 



Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, GERMANY 
September, 1894. Vol. Ill, Sec. IV. Uber den Einfluss der Arbeits- 
leit auf die Gesundheit der Arbeiter im Allgemeinen. [The Influence 
of IVorking Hours on the Health of Workers in General.] Dr. Emil 
Roth, Potsdam. Budapest, 1895. 

All overwork — no matter whether it is such by reason of its severity or 
excessive degree of exertion or of its continuance beyond the normal 
length of time — may either cause illness: (1) Directly; as shown by bad 
effects on the digestion or the circulation. This results in a general dis- 
turbance of nutrition with consequent impairment of function or disease 
of individual organs. Or (2) indirectly, in depressing the normal power 
of resistance of the tissues, and thus favoring the invasion of infectious 
bacteria. The lowered resisting power increases predisposition to disease. 
(Page 94.) 



Handbuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt. Bd. II. [Handbook of the General 
Welfare of the Working Classes. Vol. II.] Edited by Dr. Otto 
Dammer. Arbeiterschuti. [Injuries of Occupation.] Dr. Ascher. 
Stuttgart, Enke, 1903. 

Such overworked individuals are not only completely incapable of 
obeying the laws of hygiene, they are also, on account of their lowered 
resistance to every form of disease, especially the infectious forms, a 
standing menace to society, a menace which is also serious in regard to 
sexual diseases (venereal diseases) both as to their immediate and remote 
environment. . . . 

The diminution of working time is a measure of self-protection de- 
manded by the state. The fear of lessened production under shorter 
hours has, moreover, never been realized, hence this argument is without 
force. (Page 79.) 



1 62 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 

1903. Vol. V, Sec. IV. Dans quelle me sure peut-on, par des 
methodes physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres 
dans les diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences 
physiologiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur 
de tel on tel mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fatigue 
resulting from occupation he estimated by physiological methods, and 
what arguments can medical and physiological science present in favor 
of special methods of industrial organisation?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, 
University of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

One of Lagrange's chief services has been in being one of the first to 
point out that the wastes due to excessive consumption or the poisonous 
materials due to insufficiently repaired muscular work, accumulate in the 
body, and that this causes a greater predisposition and a lowered resist- 
ance to disease, especially infectious maladies. In especially grave cases 
this accumulation may manifest its presence by a characteristic sympto- 
matology. (Page 31.) 

// Ramaiiini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno L Fasc. 1. 
[Italian Journal of Social Medicine. I, 1. January, 1907.] An- 
iagonismi igiemico-economici. [The Conflict between Hygiene and 
Industry.] Prof. Angelo Celli, Director of the Institute of Experi- 
mental Hygiene at Rome. 

Fatigue also predisposes to infectious diseases. Typhoid for instance 
is much more easily taken after excessive and exhausting labor. It has 
even been proved that the poison of fatigue predisposes to disease individ- 
uals who might be able to resist infection under other circumstances. 
(Pages 36-37.) 

// Ramaiiini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno I. Fasc. 
12. [Italian Journal of Social Medicine. I. 12. December, 1907.] 
Nuove ricerche e nuove conquiste nel campo delta Patologia e delV Igiene. 
[New Researches and Acquisitions in the Pathology and Hygiene of 
Labor.] Dr. G. Y. Giglioli. 

The influence of overfatigue in inducing predisposition to disease even 
in organisms capable of resisting mfection under more favorable circum- 
stances has been again demonstrated by Ronzani in some experiments 
showing the diminution of bactericidal power exhibited by the lungs of 
overfatigued animals or of those exposed to other deteriorating conditions. 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 163 

On the other hand the part which fatigue plays in bringing about ITALY 
morbid local conditions and in rendering the organism more susceptible 
to the influence of the poisons used in manufacture has not received as 
much attention as the importance of the subject demands. The fact of 
such increased susceptibility is confirmed by many clinical observations 
especially as regards toxic neuroses. (Page 704.) 



Bulletin de V Inspection du Travail. Fasc. 1-2. Ministere du Commerce, FRANCE 
de r Industrie, des Postes, et des Telegraphes. Travaux originaux des 
Inspecteurs. [Bulletin of the Labor Department. Leaflets, 1-2. 
Original Contributions of the Inspectors.] Le Repos Hebdomadaire. 
[The Weekly Rest Day.] M. de Las Casas. Paris, Imprimerie 
Nationale, 1907. 

Physicians and hygienists declare that the man who does not rest 
sins against his own health; that he is guilty of slow suicide and shortens 
appreciably the years of life that nature meant him to have. Doctors 
say, too, that the man who works but does not rest, is more susceptible 
than others to the epidemic diseases which are prevalent in industrial 
centres, and they add, finally, that such a man, if he is actually attacked 
by such maladies, offers less resistance to them and is more likely to suc- 
cumb. (Page 146.) 



Travail et Plaisir. [JVork and Enjoyment.] Charles Fere, Doctor of 
Medicine. Paris, Alcan, 1904. 

Fatigue, no matter how produced, plays an important role in the de- 
velopment of numerous diseases by diminishing resistance to infectious 
or toxic agents. (Page 442.) 



{c) Liability of Working People to Nervous Diseases 

Overfatigue from excessive working hours not only 
renders overtaxed workers susceptible to general and infec- 
tious diseases, it predisposes them effectually to more subtle 
nervous disorders, especially neurasthenia in its various 
forms. Nervous exhaustion, considered until recently an 
ailment of brain workers and the well-to-do solely, has 



164 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

FRANCE been found by physicians and physiologists to be alarm- 
ingly prevalent among industrial workers, subject to the 
strain of overlong hours. Overexertion from excessive 
work, combined with the strain of continuing at work 
after fatigue has set in, brings on such nervous derange- 
ments, which exhibit among working people exactly the 
same clinical appearance as among other classes of society. 

ITALY Thirteenth Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 1903. Vol. V, 

Sec. IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des methodes physiolo- 
giques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans les diver ses pro- 
fessions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences physiologiques et 
medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir enfaveur de tel on tel mode 
d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fatigue resulting from 
occupation he estimated by physiological methods, and what arguments 
can medical and physiological science present in favor of special methods 
of industrial organisation?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, University of 
Turin. 

Physicians have long insisted that neurasthenia, once supposed to be 
exclusively characteristic of intellectual overexertion is extending widely 
among workers whose labor is mechanical and material. (Page 36.) 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidu?ig durch Berufsarbeit. [Fatigue 
as a Result of Occupation.] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, Turin. Berlin, 
Hirschwald, 1908. 

Does what physicians call "exhaustion" (surmenage) really exist in 
the working population? This question, which was not thought of in the 
earliest studies of neurasthenia, since neurasthenic conditions were sup- 
posed to be ailments of the liberal professions and those engaged in intense 
intellectual application exclusively, has to-day been answered by the 
medical profession in the affirmative; the daily observation of workers in 
hospital and dispensary has led to this conclusion. Above all what has 
led us to it is that the observation of well-established morbid conditions, 
the study of their etiology and course, has disclosed among workers who 
might easily pass for normal a variety of circumstances favorable to the 
invasion of these maladies and to general morbidity; circumstances, all 
of which are ultimately linked with the problem of fatigue. 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 165 

From this knowledge have proceeded all the efforts made by hygienists italy 
to ameliorate the general conditions of existence in and out of the factory, 
to plan for insurance, etc. ... to shorten hours of labor, to limit the work 
of women and, above all, of children. 

Thence have resulted all those ameliorations which, as proved by 
statistics, have had substantial results for good. To-day, in fact, we 
possess, in the practical field of industrial enterprise, extensive proofs 
that it is possible to introduce along with technical improvements a more 
logical organization of hours and wages, which allows a certain improve^ 
ment of the physical, moral, economic, and mental conditions of the 
worker, or, in other words, an increase of his productive capacity, and the 
output of industry. 

The reports which we have heard (Roth and others) here prove con- 
clusively that overstrain resulting from occupation does exist; that it is 
also entirely possible to combat it: there is, in short, a problem of over- 
work. (Pages 626-627.) This overstrain which physiologists, psycholo- 
gists, clinicians, and above all nerve specialists and alienists, encounter 
so often as to be no longer deceived by it, does not present a well-defined 
morbid picture; but it is a slow deviation, often obscured by its very slow- 
ness, and predisposing to illness of any nature; it is the borderland of 
illness. 

There are physical manifestations of general or localized muscular 
weakness; signs of incertitude or of awkwardness in rapid and rhythmical 
movements; insomnia or troubled restless sleep; atony of digestive or- 
gans, irregularity of pulse, vertigo, nausea, pain, troubles of motor and 
vaso-motor reflexes; there are the most capricious manifestations in the 
psychic realm. . . . 

The differences in objective symptoms will depend on the organ that 
may be especially overtaxed in the overworked individual under considera- 
tion, but such differences must not deceive us as to the essence of over- 
strain, which is always the result of insufficient nutrition — in the earliest 
phases insufficient only, in the advanced stages abnormal. We must 
keep this general proposition before our eyes always, in order to under- 
stand the phenomenon of overstrain, especially in order to comprehend it 
in the working class, more particularly in those attached to highly special- 
ized industries. For in these persons one does not observe such extreme 
evidences of fatigue in the physiological meaning of the word as can be 
experimentally exhibited in the laboratory, and consequently we shall 
fail to explain the chronic symptoms of fatigue in them if we do not recall 
their whole mode of life, as determined by their occupational environment, 
as well in the mill or factory as out of it. (Pages 627-628.) 



l66 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

We will endeavor to decide in accordance with the laws of voluntary 
work, what are the physiological sources of overstrain. Acute as well as 
chronic fatigue cannot be gauged solely by the output of workers. I agree 
(with a previous speaker) that one is not struck by signs of overfatigue 
or exhaustion among workers in shops and factories, and that such workers 
do not reach such a point that they absolutely cannot control their motions 
or concentrate their attention — excepting those in certain lines of work 
which demand very rapid motions. . . . But it must be recalled, from the 
physiological standpoint, that the production of voluntary work, whether 
mental or manual, follows a curve essentially different from the curve of 
organic fatigue. . . . The oscillations of the will (urging on a fatigued 
workman) varying with the interest which work inspires, have the effect 
of intensifying application and minimizing the sensation of effort, thus 
concealing fatigue. I believe that these volitional curves — oscillations 
of the will — which have to-day a more definite significance than formerly 
in experimental psychology, constitute in their entirety the complete 
psychic personality of the individual and the reason for different capacities 
of production and of resistance. In the exaltation or the depression of this 
personality, with resultant changes in the organs, and the subjective ills 
which warn the individual of these organic changes, is found the complete 
picture of overstrain; that is to say, of work done in a state of exertion 
where there is a more or less marked and persistent disproportion between 
the usefulness of the work in itself and in the worker's estimate, on the one 
hand; and the amount of energy and will power expended on it, on the 
other hand. When, however, in the industrial field, such a degree of 
fatigue is reached that the workers can appreciate it by a difference in 
output, it cannot be concluded that they have the power of instinctive 
self-protection to guard against the premonitory onset of fatigue; that 
depends, obviously, on the conditions of the contract of labor. As a 
physiologist, I believe that even if these fatigued workers produce less, 
this production, diminished as it is, costs the workers more dear than their 
previous labor; the more so because a moderate degree of fatigue has the 
effect, with many persons, of a general stimulus of the nervous factors 
involved in work. Here we have indeed the crux of the whole question. 
If the physical cost of the long hours and overstrain which characterize 
unintelligent industrial organizations were directly and proportionately 
evident, both in the sensation of fatigue and in the output of the industry 
individual and collective, the problem of fatigue, as a result of industrial 
labor, would in my opinion have been solved long ago, instead of being 
obscured by the illusory profits of long hours and insufficient wages. 
(Pages 629-630.) 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 167 

Zettschrift fiir pddagogische Psychologic, Pathologic und Hygiene. IV. GERMANY 
Der Einfluss dcs Grossstddtischcn Lehens und des Verkehrs auf das 
Nervensystem. [The Influence of the Life and Rush of Great Cities on 
the Nervous System.] Albert Moll. Berlin, 1902. 

Nervous diseases are not unknown among laborers and all those whose 
work is with their muscles; indeed, they occur here more frequently than 
is often supposed. It is to be remembered that the nervous system shares 
in every act of muscular exertion — muscles cannot act without nerves. 
As, however, the ordinary day laborer does not make as intensive or as 
strenuous a demand upon his nervous system as does the brain worker, 
the more frequent occurrence of nervous diseases among the latter is 
readily explainable. Ordinary working men are rendered more liable to 
nervous disorders by being exposed to definite conditions which are harm- 
ful to the nervous system, and long hours of work must be placed in this 
category because, as weariness becomes more pronounced, the nervous 
effort induced by the will power must be constantly greater in order to 
overcome or resist fatigue. 

Numerous cases of neurasthenia may be observed among the workers 
in home industries, either in town or country. 

Whenever an unremitting home industry is carried on where men, 
women, and children toil not only all day, but part of the night in close, 
narrow quarters, . . . there we shall find miserable, anaemic bodies with 
every symptom of nervous enfeeblement, in the greatest numbers. 

In general, many cases come under observation where sleep has been 
insufficient, or, by nature of the occupation, irregular, as with waiters 
and railroad men. And also, as Mobius has correctly pointed out and 
emphasized, those workers are especially liable to nervous disease whose 
tasks require an excessive precision, excessive attention to fine details, 
this making exhausting demands upon the nervous centres. (Page 127.) 



Cher die Ursachen der Neurasthenic und Hysteric hei Arheitern. [The 
Causes of Neurasthenia and Hysteria among Working People] Paul 
ScHONHALS. A Study of 200 Cases in the IVorkingman' s Sanitarium 
at Schonow Zehlendorf. Berlin, 1906. 

The opinion that nervous affections resulting from mental overstrain 
are confined to the well-to-do classes has long been disproved by practical 
experience. It was however, for a long time, not easy to bring ample 
proofs that the lower working classes shared to a considerable extent in 
the distribution of nervous diseases, because such data lay solely in the 



1 68 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY hands of private practitioners or hospitals. The State compulsory in- 
surance has now given the needed opportunity. (Pages 5-6.) 

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XXII. 1897. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

Hours of work in the industrial establishments of Reuss i. L. are, on 
an average, 11>^. Nervous diseases and lung diseases are stated to be 
the results of occupation. The same diseases have been observed by the 
officers of the sickness insurance department in Chemnitz to be the conse- 
quences of the long hours (amounting to 13) of the mill hands; in this 
connection a workman said that the prolonged hours of work were sense- 
less, when one considered the inevitable destruction of strength. The 
establishment of a maximum day was a mandate of hygiene. (Page 242.) 

ITALY // Ramaiiini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno I-Fasc. 1. 

[Italian Journal of Social Medicine, I. 1. January, 1907.] An- 
tagonismi igienico-economici. [The Conflict between Hygiene and 
Industry.] Prof. Angelo Celli, Member of Parliament, Director of 
the Institute of Experimental Hygiene at Rome. 

In normal work, an equal balance between assimilation and elimination 
is maintained in the muscular system. When this limit is passed fatigue 
results. Fatigue develops an actual and active poison, and its influence 
is manifest not only in the muscular system, but in the respiratory, cir- 
culatory and nervous system. Excessive labor may lead to neurasthenia. 
It is to be noted that the result may follow excessive muscular labor, as 
well as intellectual effort. The nervous system is more slowly influenced 
by fatigue, which increases the danger of neurasthenia. In many cases 
indeed the effects harmful to the muscular system are combined with 
those affecting the nervous system when the gravest results follow. 
Many trades lead to muscular and nervous exhaustion, which is in fact 
one of the most serious evils of our civilization. (Page 36.) 

// Ramaiiini. Giornale Italiano di Medicina Sociale. Anno I-Fasc. 12. 
[Italian Journal of Social Medicine, 1-12, December, 1907.] Nuovo 
ricerche e nuove conquiste net campo delta Patologia e dell' Igiene. 
[New Researches and Acquisitions in the Pathology and Hygiene of 
Labor.] Dr. G. Y. Giglioli. 

In a critical study of the first International Congress on the Diseases 
of Labor, 1 have described the evolution of the medical study of health 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 169 

conditions as they concern the wage-earning classes. I attempted to Italy 
show how the first vague Ramazzinian conception of trade diseases has 
developed into the wider and more definite theory of the pathology of 
labor. This most important division of social medicine has developed in 
a "very short time into a well organized and distinct study. It is not, nor 
does it tend to become, what is popularly called a "specialty," but it has 
the dignity of being considered the most modern branch of medical study, 
and has its ardent expounders, clinics, laboratories, and students. 

It is a very modern development, stimulated by the most recent scien- 
tific researches and acquisitions in hygiene, economics and politics. 
Through it, new methods of study have developed, by which not only the 
typical "diseases of labor," but all the factors which bear upon the health 
conditions of wage earners are estimated and studied clinically and experi- 
mentally. 

. . . Modern pathology thus unites studies of fatigue and nutrition 
with the most recent theories of predisposition to infection induced in 
formerly healthy organisms. It reconciles the very latest theories of 
neuro-pathology with the latest ideas about the neurasthenics of labor. 
While It does not attempt to invade the other branches of medicine, it 
does draw from them facts and data with which to reinforce its own postu- 
lates on social economic matters. This most modern development may 
appear to some too vague and general, to others too restricted, but it is 
certainly gaining ground and growing continually more complete and 
definite. 

There have been many valuable contributions to the pathology and 
hygiene of labor of an experimental, clinical, and legislative nature in the 
last few months. (Pages 699-700.) 



{d) Nervous Diseases and Statistics of Foreign Sickness Insurance 

Societies 

The close causal relation between overfatigue and ner- 
vous diseases is illustrated by the statistics of foreign sick- 
ness insurance societies. Close medical observation of 
working people receiving state treatment or sick pay in 
Germany has shown that nervous diseases have increased 
alarmingly among them during the last decade. Medical 
study of individuals shows further that among the causes 
of nervous breakdown the most effective is precisely the 



1 70 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY Strain of industrial occupations, characterized, as they are, 
by speed and monotony of repetition. The prevalence 
of neurasthenia and nervous disorders is so widespread 
that they are designated by physicians abroad as modern 
occupation diseases. Curtailment of excessive working 
hours is declared a physiological necessity. 

Since speed and specialization are admittedly greater 
in American industry than in any other, it is certain that 
medical observation of working people in this country must 
disclose an even greater prevalence of nervous exhaustion. 

GERMANY Qher die IVachsende Nervositdi Unserer Zeit. [The Increase of Nervousness 
in our Times.] Dr. Wilhelm Erb, Heidelberg University. Heidel- 
berg, Koester, 1894. 

In all grades of society . . . among the poor and wretched, also, neuras- 
thenia is clearly a more widespread evil than formerly. It is to be found 
in shocking frequency not only among educated men, officials . . . rail- 
road and telegraph employers . . . but also among factory workers, 
sewing women, etc. (Page 15.) 

It only needs a superficial survey to teach us that everything which 
overstrains, fatigues, and exhausts the nervous system is capable of in- 
ducing that condition which I have characterized as a pathological fixa- 
tion of fatigue, — as irritable weakness and exhaustibility. (Page 15.) 

Deutsche Medi^inische IVochenschrift, Nr. 21, 25. Mai, 1905. Die Neuras- 
thenie in Arheiterkreisen. [Neurasthenia in the Working Classes.] 
Dr. P. Leubuscher and Dr. W. Bibrowicz, formerly of the Beeliti 
Sanitarium of the State Old Age and Invalidity Department of Berlin. 
Berlin, 1905. 

The increase of diseases of the nervous system among working people 
in the last decade is a fact that is now firmly established by extensive 
and carefully conducted statistical inquiry. This is most clearly evident 
in respect to the psychoses; but there is also no doubt, in the minds of 
the most informed authors, that neurasthenia — which, though less men- 
acing than insanity to the efficiency and labor capacity of the worker is 
still sufficiently serious in this respect — is also steadily increasing in fre- 
quency and in severity. (Page 820.) 

Whatever different causes of neurasthenia may be brought forward by 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES I7I 

different authors since Beard depicted its general features, there is one Germany 
point on which all are agreed; namely, that the modern organization of 
industry with all its factors and sequels is a most prolific source of neuras- 
thenia. Though, for some years, not only the laity, but also the chief 
medical experts on neurasthenia, as Lowenfeld and Binswanger, over- 
looked the working classes in relation to this disease, this attitude is now 
radically changed. On all sides, in the clinics and physicians' offices, 
and by the managers of the large insurance funds, proofs of the enormous 
increase of neurasthenia as a cause of inability to work are being pre- 
sented. There are two reasons for this change: 1. The observation of 
chronic diseases of working people has become vastly more far-reaching 
and exact. 2. Altered conditions in the labor world have created an 
unusual liability to acquired nervous troubles. We are inclined to think 
that both of these factors contribute, though not in the same proportion, 
to the explanation of the fact. 

It is certain that the question of diseases of working people has come 
more prominently to the front than was the case in the past. And em- 
ployers are learning that the health and strength of the people is an ad- 
vantage to them as well. (Page 821.) 

. . . How frequently delay in seeking medical advice may have 
formerly happened is of course not possible to estimate. Frequently 
enough, without doubt, and yet we regard our second explanation of 
increased neurasthenia, the altered conditions of life and labor, as of 
much greater weight. Work has become very different. Piece work 
has indeed obtained larger wages, but has developed an impetus and 
speed and intensity of effort that used to be unknown, and this invariably 
crushes the weaker workers, those for whom all work is a heavier burden 
than for the strong. Continuous anxiety is felt by these lest they fall 
behind. Then sometimes voluntarily, sometimes compulsorily, overtime 
is undertaken, and so it turns out that the working hours, instead of being 
comparatively shorter than the usual day, are really much longer, and by 
reason of the irregularity far more exhausting. (Page 821.) 

Thorough and ample observation bearing on the forms and etiology of 
neurasthenia among working people has been made possible only by the 
creation of the great Sanitaria of the State Insurance Department. When 
the first one, that at Giitergotz, was built in 1894 for about 100 chronic 
male cases, the applications were so numerous that the large sanitorium 
for 220 men and 110 women at Beelitz was next erected. 

Of the patients treated in these establishments on an average, 26% 
have been neurasthenics, and the percentage for individual years has 
risen from 18% in 1897 to about 40% in the past few years. (Page 821.) 



GERMANY 



172 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Classifications According to Occupation. Among 1564 Cases 

Typesetters 246=15.75% of the cases 
Carpenters 148= 9.45% " " " 
Locksmiths 77= 5.00%, " " " 
Mechanics 30= 1.09% " " " 

(Page 821.) 

The whole number of typesetters insured is about 1% of all insured 
persons; the whole number of carpenters, about 5%. When this propor- 
tion is considered, the percentage of neurasthenic cases among typesetters 
— 15.75% of all neurasthenic cases — is most striking, while that of the 
carpenters, — 9.45%, — though high, is not quite so disproportionate. 
Oppenheim also points out the frequency of neurasthenia among news- 
paper typesetters. (Page 822.) 

We wish to suggest that a key to explain the great increase of neu- 
rasthenia among workers generally in our great cities may be found in the 
unusually large number of cases in the above-mentioned trades. We 
have here to do with classes of workmen who stand perhaps highest among 
their associates. 

. . . The typesetter must follow with strained attentiveness an occupa- 
tion of indescribable monotony, for the speed to which he is forced de- 
stroys all meaning of what he sets. 

It is the same with the work of many mechanics, who never see a com- 
pleted piece of work go out of their hands, who only make a part of some 
whole. But here we have to do with the best of our modern city work- 
ingmen and their growing claims, not only for material but also for 
spiritual things. What to the common workman is only work, should be 
a calling to every true craftsman, and this can no longer be the case. 
(Page 822.) 

He who is not strong and enjoying the vigor of health must under 
these conditions become neurasthenic. When workingmen have an 
occupation which brings with it a certain pleasure there is, according to 
our observations, little trace of neurasthenia to be found. Such is, for 
instance, the case with painters, who in spite of the distinctly unfavorable 
circumstance of liability to lead poisoning are seldom neurotic. 

The influence of uncongenial work is naturally intensified by cares, 
illness — troubles to which the worker and his family are constantly ex- 
posed — and yet, contrary to what one might expect, the latter causes 
alone have been, in our experience, insignificant in accounting for neuras- 
thenia. But almost always in answer to the question, "What caused 
your illness?" comes the reply, "The hard work." (Page 822.) 

We must here state plainly that as to clinical appearances we have 
found nothing to differentiate the neurasthenic workingman from the 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES I73 

neurasthenic patient of any other social class. The symptoms and con- Germany 
ditions are the same for both. (Page 824.) 

The most important curative factors for our city wage-earners, as 
well as for the patients of the middle and higher classes, are, removal 
from the monotony of their work, often also from painful family condi- 
tions, the opportunity to enjoy from time to time the pleasures of a fairly 
comfortable existence, freedom, air, and light. (Page 824.) 

The dangers threatening the health and well-being of the nation from 
the increase in nervous diseases, though not recognized by all, have yet 
been emphasized by many experts, in recent years. 

Pelman, Mobius, Grohmann, Laehr, Determann, Cramer, and Wind- 
scheid have energetically promoted the combating of neurasthenia among 
workingmen, and the influence of the State Insurance Department and 
the large private benefit societies tends to agitate the question more and 
more generally. (Page 825.) 

Verwaltungshericht der Landes-Versiclerungsanstalt Berlin, fiir das Jahr 
1906. [Report of the State Invalidity and Old Age Insurance Depart- 
ment for Berlin, for 1906] Report of the Physician-in-Chief of the 
Beeliti Sanatorium. {Tuberculosis not included.) 

In the course of the year, 1655 men and 824 women were treated. . . . 

By far the largest number of the patients were nervous cases, and those 
suifering from gouty diathesis and articular rheumatism, cardiac and 
stomach diseases also took an important place. Of the cardiac cases, 
aside from valvular troubles, most suffered from myocarditis, hyper- 
trophy of the heart, weakness of heart, dilatation or a complication of the 
last two disorders, that naturally presented a markedly severe type of 
illness. . . . 

Forty per cent showed simple, idiopathic hypertrophies, 35 per cent 
were neuroses of the heart, 10 per cent dilatations, and 10 per cent pri- 
mary weakness of the heart. 

Along with the major cardiac neuroses there is also seen, among the 
working people of Berlin, as a result of overwork, an extremely prevalent 
neurasthenia, which is more or less a concomitant of heart disease; the 
features of this latter reveal the frequency of maladies to which special 
trades, such as typesetters (compositors) are specially predisposed. . . . 
(Page 61.) 

Of the 1450 (1410) men patients who were discharged, 748 (684) or 
52 (49) per cent — over one-half — were nervous cases, whose breakdown 
was in the majority of cases directly due to their overworking in their 



74 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Various occupations; ... Of the women discharged one-fourth were 
anaemic or chlorotic, or, in exact figures, 176 (194) in 734 (682) patients. 
Nervous exhaustion and nervous diseases were even more prominent, 
namely, 299 (261), or over one-third of all the female patients belonged 
in this class. (Page 67.) 

Ibid. For the year 1909. 

During the past year the patients discharged from the Beelitz Sani- 
tarium numbered, men 1815, women 803. Of this whole number 1707 
men (94 per cent) and 762 women (95 per cent) were restored to earning 
capacity. 

As was the case last year, nervous ailments predominated among the 
men, the most frequent form of nervous illness being neurasthenia. 

Of the 1815 male patients 1206, in round numbers almost 70 per cent, 
were nervous cases, and, while in some the exciting cause of breakdown 
might be variously explained, in by far the largest proportion it arose 
from the overstrain of their daily labor. 

Of the female cases more than one-seventh, or 128 of 803 were anaemic 
and chlorotic, and one-half of all the women suffered from nerve strain, 
whatever other complications were present. (Page 112.) 

The seriousness of nervous disorders to wage-earners may be seen in the 
following figures showing the entire number of days lost from work by sick- 
ness. The total number, which is here reproduced, includes all the time 
from when the patients first stopped work, and the time spent in sani- 
tarium. To emphasize the figures, a few only of the other most serious dis- 
ease groups are shown in comparison.* 



Disease Groups 


Whole Number of Working Days 

Lost from Time of Cessation of 

Work to Time of Discharge 

FROM Sanitarium 




Men 


Women 


Infections 


60 
1,259 

2,773 

5,177 

3,425 

44,965 


373 


Poisonings 

Malnutrition 


7,861 


Skin, muscles, joints, etc 


935 


Digestive troubles 


2,057 


Nervous disorders 


25,075 







*The whole table is not reproduced. 



(Page 112.) 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES I75 

Zeitschrift fiir Klinische Mediiin. Bd. 60. 1906. Aus dem Sanatorium 
der Landes-Versicherungsanstalt Berlin in Beelit^. Uher Herier- 
krankungen in der Berliner Arheiterbevolkerung. [Heart Disease 
among the Working People of Berlin.] Dr. Lubenau, Assistant 
Physician in tie Beelit:^ Sanatorium of the Old Age and Invalidity 
Insurance Department of Berlin. Berlin, 1906. 

... Of the cardiac cases here treated, the number of neuroses of the 
heart and of simple, idiopathic hypertrophies preponderated greatly, 
being 35 per cent for the former, and 40 per cent for the latter. Dilata- 
tions of the heart followed, some of them primary, a few resulting from 
cardiac hypertrophy, other cases of primary weakness of the heart (De- 
bilitas cordis) with 10 per cent. 

The essential purpose of this work is to show how cardiac diseases 
develop in working people as a result of injurious conditions of labor, and 
therefore, beside hypertrophies and dilatations, only those diseases are 
considered in whose origin occupational and industrial dangers play a 
more or less leading part, and which, therefore, according to this origin, 
may be properly designated as genuine working-class diseases. 

Dilatations resulting from the drink habit are excluded. (Pages 134- 
135.) 

In coming to the class of cardiac neuroses it is to be remarked that 
nervous affections of the heart among Berlin workmen are very common, 
as may be inferred from the extraordinary prevalence of neurasthenia. 
(Page 136.) 

It has been found that when these workers are removed from the 
enormous competition and rush of the city, overstrained working energy 
soon fails. This continuous overwork is the cause of the general and 
often grave neurasthenia, as has been recently shown in an instructive 
article. (Leubuscher und Bibrowicz, "Die Neurasthenic in Arbeiter- 
krei.sen.") (Page 137.) 

In most of these cases of simple neurasthenia, nervous affections of the 
heart are the rule. There is the sensation of palpitations, pain in the 
region of the heart, a feeling of great anxiety, and shortness of breath after 
exertion. Such diseases have serious importance for workers on account 
of cardiac complication. (Page 137.) 

The cases described above are limited to those in which the heart 
symptoms of nervous origin present the dominating features and which, 
therefore, may be regarded purely as cases of cardiac neuroses. 

The causative factors of such maladies, as in general neurasthenia, 
may be admittedly of manifold kinds; yet it is worthy of especial mention, 



GERMANY 



176 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY in Considering cases here reported, that the cause of sickness was re- 
peatedly ascribed to the definitely injurious influences of the patients' 
work, to physical or mental overstrain or anxiety of one kind or another 
in connection with occupation. (Page 137.) 

The tendency of cases of cardiac neuroses to relapse must be pointed 
out: Certain of our cases show this tendency very interestingly. With 
some, after treatment in the sanatorium, light employment was per- 
mitted, and by the strict avoidance of physical overstrain the disease then 
followed a favorable course. In other cases invalidism was declared, and 
the invalidity pension secured. These, also, showed a gratifying improve- 
ment as the result of relief from exertion and the saving of strength. 

Mental as well as physical overstrain frequently results in cardiac 
neuroses. The patients of this class are recruited from salesclerks, 
bookkeepers, secretaries, machinists, and telephone clerks. 

Printers (typesetters) especially are numerously represented in this 
category, for the acuter forms of neurasthenia in general are extraordi- 
narily widespread among them. The night work necessary in this occu- 
pation, and the ever more exacting piecework, exhibit a steady tendency 
to strain the nerve-energy of the individual to its very uttermost limit. 
(Page 139.) 



Oher die Ursachen der Neurasthenic und Hysteric bei Arheitern. [The 
Causes of Neurasthenia and Hysteria among Working People.] Paul 
ScHONHALS. Berlin, 1906. A Study of 200 Cases in the Working- 
man's Sanitarium at Schonow Zehlendorf. 

. . . Another group of injurious factors is to be found in the work 
itself. In all, 45 cases, or almost 22.5 per cent, gave physical overstrain 
from work as the prime cause of illness, and here the piecework system 
seemed to play an especially injurious part. In 15 cases I concluded that 
piecework was the original cause of the breakdown, and in 10 of these 
cases I could discover no other contributory factor. Four of the others 
had some slight hereditary predisposition, and the overstrain here acted 
as the excitant of disease. The fifth had returned to piecework after 
several brief illnesses, until he finally became permanently overstrained. 

Thus, to repeat, 5 per cent of all the cases of neurasthenia were trace- 
able entirely to the overstrain of piecework, with no other discoverable 
cause for illness. 

This is a high figure, but whoever has been inside of a factory and has 
observed the prodigious rapidity of the pace of work there, and the fore- 
sight and attention which each worker must exercise, will be able to esti- 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 1 77 

mate correctly the wearing nature of piecework. It is not alone the physi- Germany 
cal strain, but in a high degree the psychic factor that must be taken into 
consideration. It is the nervous tension and strain that is felt by the 
workers themselves to be the hardest feature of their work. Few can 
long endure such work. One patient had done piecework from his eigh- 
teenth to the forty-sixth year. He was an exception. Most workers can 
only keep it up for four to five years, then seek something easier. 

Even night work is not quite as harmful. In eight cases I found it 
(night work) as one cause, but only three cases where night work was the 
exclusive cause of disease. In the other five, it was, it is true, the chief 
cause, yet other slightly predisposing conditions were also present. (Pages 
14-15.) 

Among twenty-two cases caused by unfavorable conditions of work, 
fourteen showed that overstrain in work, especially where overtime was 
required, was chiefly responsible for the breakdown, while other less 
prominent factors had also had some injurious influence, and had helped 
in the result. (Page 16.) 

We find then three specially dangerous factors in the life of the worker: 
Trauma (accident). Alcohol, and Overstrain. Other dangers, such as 
ordinary illness, etc., threaten all classes alike. 

What is to be done? The State is making provision for accident: 
a campaign is being waged against alcohol: there remains the question of 
overstrain to be dealt with. (Pages 22-23.) 

It is now generally recognized that the combination of physical and 
mental overstrain is especially dangerous for the nervous system: Artisans 
will therefore show a higher percentage of nervous disease than laborers, 
and the skilled artisan will suffer more than the casual worker or man of 
all trades whose work is largely mechanical. In fact, my inquiries showed 
that 57 per cent of the cases were skilled artisans, to 43 per cent of the 
others. (Accident cases are not included.) 

The difference is even sharper when we compare the liability to nervous 
diseases among artisans, and the more skilled workers with such liability 
among common laborers. The relation is then 74.0 : 26.0, as seen by the 
following table: 

1. Artisans, highly skilled 57.0% 

r skilled 17.0% 74.0% 

2. General Workers 43% \ 

Unskilled 26.0% 

(Page 24.) 

In the endeavor to find out what employment was most injurious I 
distinguished between factory work and ordinary business employment; 
12* 



lyS FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY further, between public transportation, and ordinary day labor. I then 
found that of the artisans, 21.0 per cent of the cases of illness were in small 
businesses, to 36 per cent in factories. (Page 25.) 

Of the general workers, again, 18 per cent were factory workers, while 
transportation showed 7.0 per cent, and day laboring work 6.0 per cent. 

These last figures are by many writers found to be higher, but the 
differences may be accounted for by the localities where their observations 
are made. (Page 25.) 

It seems indubitable that factory work considerably outweighs other 
occupations in the sense that it provides the greatest number of factors 
tending to produce the neuroses of work in the industrial populations, and 
I am compelled to conclude that modern industry, continually developing 
as it is on more and more colossal lines, constitutes a dangerous and potent 
cause for a continuous increase of neurasthenia and hysteria. (Page 26.) 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
September, 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. 
[Fatigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, Hirsch- 
wald, 1908. 

Beside the intensity of work and other factors, . . . there is still 
another factor to be considered, whose importance is universally under- 
estimated; that is the psychic factor. Mosso, in his investigations of the 
law of fatigue has shown ergographically the influence of psychic weariness 
on muscular strength, by demonstrating that whenever there is fatigue of 
the psychic centres there is always a resultant corresponding condition of 
the motor centres. In proportion as physical work is, at the same time, 
mentally fatiguing, the greater the attentiveness that it requires, so much 
sooner does fatigue appear. 

This is the case in all occupations which are linked with special dangers, 
and where especial demands are made upon the responsibility of the 
worker, or where an extreme and unremitting attentiveness is required. 
In this latter respect shop girls must again be cited, for as a result of the 
unfailing attention and readiness demanded of ttiem, they often fall a 
prey to chronic fatigue, and this the more readily accordingly as they 
were, to begin with, unsuited for their duties. 

The psychic factor is furthermore of decisive importance for the work- 
ing capacity as such. Even the skilled workman does not work as evenly 
as the machine, but his capacity displays certain regular, recurrent varia- 
tions due to the psychic factor. (Page 611.) 

The researches of Pieraccini into the curve of work showed that, with 



WORKING PEOPLE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 1 79 

the calling of a muscle or nerve into activity, the extent and certainty of Germany 
its functioning first gradually increased, and in the second period of work 
was lowered. The second and third hours displayed, with manual workers 
(handworkers), the highest point of achievement, which was not exceeded 
through the rest of the whole day. 

With this the results of a large steel and rolling mill agree, as it was 
there shown that of the average output of 40 t, 23 t belonged to the morn- 
ing, and 17 to the rest of the day. 

The psychic factor is also important in another respect. With the 
progressive division of labor, work has become more and more mechanical. 
... A definite share of overfatigue and its sequels, especially neuras- 
thenia, must be ascribed to this monotony; to the absence of spontaneity 
or joy in work. How alarming the increase of anaemia and neurasthenia 
among working people has been in the past ten years is shown by the 
records of the sick benefit funds, the polyclinics, and the hospitals. Many 
medical and scientific authorities have emphasized the increase of neuras- 
thenia in the working classes. The ample materials of the Berlin State 
Insurance Sanitarium at Beelitz have more particularly served to prove 
the steady increase of neurasthenia, — actually from 18 per cent in 1897, 
to 40 per cent in 1904. Similar figures are shown by the sanitarium at 
Zehlendorf. where the highest percentage of neurotic patients were hand- 
workers and skilled workers, with whom the combination of physical and 
mental strain reacted destructively on the nervous system. . . , (Pages 
613-614.) 

But that monotony is also of importance in so far as it nullifies pleasure 
in work, thereby favoring the onset of fatigue, must also be admitted from 
a part of the statistics. So, according to a factory inspector, the effect 
of certain light work with corset steels, admitting of no break for several 
hours, was distinctly fatiguing; the remedy was a periodical change of 
work for the employees in question. (Page 615.) 

Of greater importance is the excessive overstrain of piecework, which 
indeed pays better, but at the cost of a speed and intensity of work which 
was formerly unknown. That these injurious effects first assail the weaker 
part of the working population is self-evident. My own observations, 
especially in textile mills, confirmed the frequency of anaemia and neuras- 
thenia, especially among young women. (Page 615.) 

To estimate more correctly the influence of kinds of work, we may 
observe the results noted as to pulse and respiration in a large electric 
works. Here, in no case was heightened pulse or respiration observed at 
the end of work. The difference between this and textile factory work is 
that in the latter the worker is to a great extent dependent on the machine, 



i8o 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY and must keep up with its speed, while in the electric establishment the 
workers are, as a rule, dependent on the machinery only to an extent 
which they determine for themselves. (Page 617.) 

As the textile workers are dependent, at the mercy of the machine, so 
the clerks in the big stores are at the mercy of the public, and it is this un- 
remitting attention, coming and going, and nerve strain that explain the 
high percentage of anaemia that is continually found among shop girls in 
these places. (Page 617.) 

In a sanitarium where the members of the sick insurance included 
shop girls, machine sewing and dressmaking women and maids in hotels 
and public houses, among 145 who were chiefly suffering from anemia, 
chlorosis, or neurasthenia, 110 were to be regarded as overworked. 

Of the 145 cases 58, not including home workers, had a sedentary oc- 
cupation; 44of these were overworked; 87 had work involving a standing 
position; 66 of these were overworked. (Page 618.) 



AUSTRIA Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 

1907. Vol. Ill, Sec. VIII. Berufs Morbiditdt und Mortalitdt. 
[The Morbidity and Mortality of Occupations.] Alfred R. von Lind- 
HEIM, Vienna. Berlin, 1908. 

Sources of information: 1897-01 inclusive. The Vienna District 
Sickness Insurance Societies; General Workingmen's Insurance and Re- 
lief Society; Electric Street Railways Insurance Society; eleven Steam 
Railways Insurance Funds. 

I have endeavored to elucidate the question of how far the increasing 
nervousness of modern life is connected with occupation. The question 
is, indeed, not a new one. (Page 1293.) 

I selected two occupations, railroading and electric works. . . . The 
number investigated reached about 98,480 members of the sick benefit 
funds. . . . (Summary. The number of these investigated, 98,480 in the 
two modern industries, railroading and electricity — including in the latter 
only those whose work was in some way related to the electric current — 
was compared with about 388,000 members of other occupations. Rela- 
tion of former to latter, 98,480; 388,000— about 1 : 5.) ... It was evi- 
dent that the respiratory organs of those engaged in the railroad service 
were much less endangered than those of the industrial workers in more 
sedentary occupations in Vienna. 

From various tables relating to the two occupations under examination 
it may be asserted that these two modern callings show a persistently 
greater contingent of nervous diseases than do other occupations. To 



AGES OF INCIDENCE l8l 

this is to be added that nervous diseases must be recognized as occupation Austria 
diseases in all great modern industries. (Page 1297.) 

These disorders may with perfect right be truly designated as modern 
occupation diseases. (Page 1299.) 

. . . Nervous diseases are to be recognized as most characteristic 
phenomena of our modern industries. (Page 1299.) 



{e) Ages of Incidence 

The need of protecting health by restricting working 
hours is often supposed to be Hmited to children and young 
girls. The greater liability of adults to neurasthenia and 
nervous diseases (being highest between the ages of twenty 
and forty-five years) shows that, as regards these diseases, 
adults are even more susceptible than young girls. Exces- 
sive working hours, therefore, which engender overfatigue 
and nervous exhaustion should be as carefully limited for 
mature women as for the young. 



Die Pathologie und Therapte der Neurasthenie. [Pathology and Therapeutics GERMANY 
of Neurasthenia.] Dr. Otto Binswanger, Professor of Psychiatry, 
and Director of the Psychiatric Hospital, Jena. Jena, Fischer, 1896. 

Finally, in considering the importance of age, it is to be said that certain 
stages of the physical and mental development are uncommonly perilous 
to the nervous system in individuals with a hereditary handicap and con- 
stitutional predisposition to nervous disorders. Even healthy persons 
are more liable to neurasthenic ills in certain periods of life than in others. 
Still more important than the time of puberty, when the physical growth 
has increased claims made upon it, is the age between 20 and v30, for then 
the physical and mental strength is put forth most strenuously and in- 
cessantly in the struggle for a livelihood. Yet even in the period of mature 
manhood, 30 to 40, neurasthenia frequently occurs. . . . 

Hosslin's statistics showed that among 828 neurasthenias 83 per cent 
occurred between the ages of 20 to 50 years. 

My own experience is, that of 131 cases, in whom I was able to locate 
exactly the starting point of the disease as to the time it began, the relation 
to age was as follows : 



1 82 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY 



Began in the first decade of life — 4 cases 

" " second " " " — 46 

" " " third " " " -— i3 

" " fourth " " " —32 

" " " fifth " " " — 3 

" " sixth " " " — 2 

" " " seventh " " " — 1 



(Page 46.) 



Deutsche Medi^inische IVochenschrift. Nr. 21; 25. Mai, 1905. Die Neu- 
rasthenic in Arheiterkreisen. [Neurasthenia in the IVorking Classes.] 
Dr. P. Leubuscher and W. Bibrowicz. Formerly of the Beeliti 
Sanitarium of the State Old Age and Invalidity Department of Berlin. 
Berlin, 1905. 

Our reasons for the age groupings in our tables are as follows: Age 
up to 20 years is, for various reasons, unimportant in the consideration of 
neurasthenia, . . . We therefore end one period here. The next five 
years we regard as the period of completed growth. The time between 
26 and 35 years seems to be the most serious epoch, — that of founding 
and supporting the family, of care and responsibility, of intensive work. 
Almost equally important is the period from 36th to 45th year. We chose 
the latter as a limit because after this the organic changes of age, arterio- 
sclerosis, emphysema, etc., begin to make themselves evident. Following 
this grouping we fmd the following figures: 

I. (16-20 years) 3.8% of the Neurasthenics 

II. (21-25 " ) 11.0% " " 

III. (26-35 " )40.0% " " 

IV. (36-45 " ) 31.0% " " 



V. (over 45 " ) 14.0% 



(Page 822.) 



In these statistics we have not shown the period of the onset of neuras- 
thenia, but that stage where the gradually developing symptoms had 
reached a degree that seriously threatened the working capacity, a cri- 
terion that is justified by practical considerations. 

Our results correspond closely with those of Lowenfeld, who found 
most cases fell between the years of 20 and 45. KraflFt Ebbing's figures 
at Aethaus were also similar. (Page 822.) 



Verwaltungshericht der Landes-Versicherungsanstalt Berlin, fiir das Jahr 
1906. [Report of the State Invalidity and Old Age Insurance Department 
for Berlin, for 1906.] Report of the Physician in Chief of the Beeliti 
Sanatorium. {Tuberculosis not included.) Berlin, Loewenthal, 1907. 

As regards age most of the male patients, 59 per cent, were in the prime 
of manhood — between 30 to 50 years, whilst patients under 20 or over 60 
were only two per cent each. (Page 72.) 



NERVOUS DISEASE AND HEREDITY 183 

The women, on the other hand, showed that the largest numbers of Germany 
patients came from the age-group between 16 and 19 years, and between 
20 and 29, . . . partly explainable by the withdrawal of women after 
marriage from industrial occupations. (Page 72.) 



(/) Nervous Disease and Heredity 

The limitation of excessive working hours for women is 
required for the preservation of the race because nervous 
debiHty generated by overfatigue is transmissible, and 
causes nervous weakness and predisposition to nervous dis- 
ease to a marked degree in the second generation. 

Die Pathologie u. Therapie der Neurasthenie. [Pathology and Therapeutics 
of Neurasthenia.] Dr. Otto Binswanger, Prof, of Psychiatry and 
Director of the Psychiatric Hospital, Jena. Jena, Fischer, 1896. 

(Having studied the subject of heredity) what does this inherited pre- 
disposition signify? What influence will it have upon the future develop- 
ment of the individual? As we have seen that the neuropathic predis- 
position is exhibited by a general diminution of the efficiency of the nervous 
system as the result of, apparently, insignificant hindrances to develop- 
ment, its importance from the clinical standpoint is not hard to state. 

Such detrimental factors as those to which human society as a whole 
or individual members of individual occupations or of social classes are 
all equally exposed, will have the effect of producing insanity and nervous 
diseases with distinctly greater frequency in individuals of neuropathic 
predisposition. (Page 37.) 



Grenifragen des N erven und Seelenlehens, Bd. IV. [Borderland Problems 
of Nervous and Psychic Life.] Edited by Loewenfeld aiid Kurella. 
Berufswahl und Nervenleben. [The Choice of Occupation and Nerve 
Life.] Dr. August Hoffman. Wiesbaden, Bergmann, 1904. 

It is universally agreed by physicians that diseases of the nervous 
system have become inordinately more frequent in the last few decades 
than in an earlier period. Even granting a more faulty diagnosis of nerv- 
ous disorders in former years, and admitting that the attention of physi- 
cians was less drawn to such disorders then than now, it is nevertheless 



184 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

certain that insanity and nervous diseases did not formerly take the 
frightfully prominent place that they take to-day. . . . 

The causes are varied. In the foreground stands the rush of modern 
civilization, and, when one generation has become permeated with nervous 
affections, the next one suffers these ills, through inheritance, in doubly 
distilled strength. (Page 5.) 

Deutsche Medi7Jnische IVochenschrift. Nr. 21. 25. Mai, 1905. Die Neu- 
rasthenie in Arheiterkreisen. [Neurasthenia in the JVorking Classes.] 
Dr. P. Leubuscher and W. ^ibrowicz, formerly of the Beeliti Sani- 
tarium of State Old Age and Invalidity Department, Berlin. 

Neurotic diseases, if not counteracted, are often the first step in the 
direction of organic disease or severe mental disorders. 

But our generation is not alone in being menaced with the grave dangers 
of these diseases. A terrible question is involved, that concerns the future 
— the question of heredity. We shall not attempt here to answer the 
query as to the inheritance of acquired characteristics. . . . But one thing 
is undeniable; the influence exerted upon the sensitive and impression- 
able natures of children by neurotic parents is inexpressibly unfavorable. 
(Page 825.) 

Verwaltungshericht der Landes-Versicherungsanstalt Berlin, fiir das Jahr 
1906. [Report of the State Invalidity and Old Age Insurance Depart- 
ment for Berlin, for the year 1906.] Report of the Physician in Chief 
of the Beeliti Sanitarium. {Tuberculosis not included.) Berlin, 
Loewenthal, 1907. 

A considerable proportion of the cases, of both sexes, and especially 
those belonging in the category of nervous patients, were handicapped 
by inherited disease on one or on both sides of their parentage. Such 
cases usually exhibited the gravest symptoms, ran the most unsatisfactory 
course, and showed a uniform tendency to relapse. The inherited taint 
was evidenced by epilepsy, insanity, love of drink, general nervousness or 
migraine. (Page 70.) 

According to our tables as shown, out of 5538 (4665) men, there were 
1859 (1596) or over one-third (34 per cent) who had inherited taints, and 
of 1128 (816) women there were 729 (565). or 65 (69) per cent with in- 
herited taints. 

Of those suffering from diseases of the lungs, 14-15 per cent had in- 
herited the diathesis; of the nervous patients, 20-29 per cent; of those 



NERVOUS DISEASES AND OVERSTIMULATION 185 

suffering from cancer, ulcers, and abscesses, 5-7 per cent, and of gouty- Germany 
rheumatic cases, 6-11 per cent. (Page 71.) 



Uber die Ursachen der Neurasthenie und Hysterie bet Arheitern. [The 
Causes of Neurasthenia and Hysteria among Working People.] Paul 
ScHONHALS. A Study of 200 Cases in the Workingman s Sanitarium 
at Schonow Zehlendorf. Berlin, 1906. 

Predisposition plays an important part in all internal diseases, but is 
specially menacing in the case of nervous diseases. Those persons in 
whose families nervous diseases have occurred are more inclined to similar 
disorders than those who are not hereditarily so burdened. 

Such predisposition may be variously described — Binswanger defines 
it as "a molecular inferiority of the nervous system." Inherited weak- 
ness being present, some external exciting factor is usually required to 
precipitate actual disease. (Page 7.) 

It is clear that the more pronounced the heredity, the more easily will 
an insignificant cause be capable of bringing on illness; and vice versa, 
in a person of better heredity, external influences must be more intense 
and harmful to cause illness. (Page 8.) 

Such hereditary handicap I found beyond question in 9.5 per cent of 
200 cases in the Workingman's Sanatorium at Schonow Zehlendorf. This 
figure is without a doubt too low, but the difficulty of getting family his- 
tories from these patients is great. Binswanger gives 49 per cent of men 
and 35.5 of women as hereditarily predisposed. Binswanger's figures are 
not confined to working people. Leubuscher and Bibrowicz state it at 
21.5 per cent. (Page 8.) 



{g) Nervous Diseases and Overstimulation 

The onset of nervous exhaustion is often unperceived. 
A special danger to health arises when, after excessive work, 
this form of overfatigue shows itself in unnatural stimulation, 
which conceals fatigue and creates a false exhilaration. 
Only after health is seriously threatened, does the over- 
strain become apparent, overstimulation being succeeded 
by reaction and exhaustion. 



1 86 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY Thirteenth Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, Sept. 1903. 

Vol. V, Sec. IF. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des methodes physio- 
logiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans les diverses 
professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences physiologiques 
et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur de tel on tel 
mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fatigue resulting 
from occupation he estimated by physiological methods, and what argu- 
ments can medical and physiological science present in favor of special 
methods of industrial organisation?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves. Uni- 
versity of Turin. 

Lagrange observes that the intensity and rapidity of modern industry 
are attained rather by making excessive drains on nervous force than by 
the use of muscular power. "There results a special form of fatigue" 
(says Lagrange), "not that kind which inclines us frankly to rest, — which 
gives a sensation of well-being or content after work well and thoroughly 
done, with sufficient time to do it in, but a species of exhaustion accom- 
panied by an abnormal nervous irritability, — an enervation — perhaps 
appearing in the form of depression, perhaps as excitation and impression- 
ability." 



GERMANY Die Pathologic und Therapie der Neurasthenic. [Pathology and Thera- 
peutics of Neurasthenia.] Dr. Otto Binswanger, Prof, of Psychiatry 
and Director of the Psychiatric Hospital at Jena. Jena, Fischer, 1896. 

Simple fatigue is the natural consequence of every considerable ex- 
penditure of energy. ... If this simple weariness is intensified beyond a 
certain limit ... as in climbing mountains, a condition of overstimula- 
tion occurs. 

One is temporarily capable, apparently, of a still more considerable 
exertion, the sensation of fatigue disappears, the general flagging gives 
way to an unnatural elasticity of movement, so that one pursues his aim 
with accelerated speed. As soon, however, as the wished-for goal is 
reached, the artificial tension vanishes, the unstrung condition asserts 
itself. In this state, it is often impossible to sleep, for the overfatigue is 
combined with a peculiar unnatural overstimulation of the senses. . . . 
But with healthy individuals, such symptoms also disappear after a short 
time (1 to 2 hours) and deep sleep finally banishes all trace of fatigue. 
(Page 20.) 



NERVOUS DISEASES AND OVERSTIMULATION 187 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, austr. 
1907. Vol. Ill, Sec. VIII. Berufs Morhiditdt und Mortalitdt. [The 
Morbidity and Mortality of Occupations.] Alfred R. von Lindheim, 
Vienna. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908. 

Of these victims of modern speed and rush, the neurasthenics, Professor 
Erb has rightly said, "They appear to be capable of doing everything that 
the robust can do; but as soon as they are tired, exhaustion comes on, and 
their incessantly increasing irritability intensifies their fatigue." (Page 
1300.) 

The Mental Symptoms of Fatigue. {Reprinted from the Transactions of the united 
New York State Medical Association.) Edward Cowles, M.D., 
Medical Superintendent of the McLean Hospital, Somerville, Mass. 
New York, Fless and Ridge, 1893. 

The sensory function by which the complex normal feelings of fatigue 
are appreciated, may itself be over-exercised to exhaustion. There is 
tire of the power to feel the tire. This condition may be called fatigue 
ancesthesia, and, beginning with the early stages of pathological fatigue, 
there is usually some degree of it. Every physician has experienced this 
when, after a night of anxious professional work, with loss of sleep, he has 
had a day of excitable alertness of mind and body, and there is a sense of 
nervous strain, with, perhaps, undue mental facility and physical irri- 
tability. Many hours' sleep may be gained in the following night, but 
instead of feeling refreshed he has a sense of malaise, languor, and fatigue. 
The real fatigue was greater the day before, but he could not feel it as 
such. It is not until the second day after the excessive effort that he 
has recovered his exhausted power to feel the fatigue. In a lesser degree 
this fatigue anaesthesia becomes a constant accompaniment of the neu- 
rasthenic condition. Overworked women, professional and business 
men "work on their nerves" and say they don't feel tired, and "nothing is 
the matter." They "feel better" when actively exercised in their custo- 
mary labors. This condition comes on insidiously and is a most dangerous 
one. The patient is neurasthenic before any one suspects it. (Pages 
22-23.) 

The Harvey Lectures, 1905-1906. Fatigue. Frederic S. Lee, Ph.D. 
Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1906. 

. . . The chief sign of fatigue is, in a word, depression — depression of 
irritability, wherein a given stimulus calls forth a response of less intensity 



loo FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

than before; and depression for the total capacity for work, whatever the 
intensity of the stimulus; its early stages may show, however, a temporary 
heightened irritability and an apparent, not real, heightened capacity for 
work. (Page 169.) 



(b) Fatigue and Nervous Diseases 

Neurasthenia and other nervous diseases are due to over- 
strain of the nervous system. Since the central nervous 
system regulates all the vital functions, nervous exhaus- 
tion or neurasthenia may affect all organs and functions of 
the body. 

Intense and long lasting fatigue is a characteristic of the 
disease. Disorders of the heart, circulation, the special 
senses and the digestive apparatus are common symptoms. 
When nervously overtaxed persons continue to work for 
excessive hours the functional mechanisms may become 
totally impaired. 



Uber die Wachsende Nervositdt Unserer Zeit. [The Increase of Nervousness 
in our Times.] Dr. Wilhelm Erb, Professor of Medicine, Heidelberg 
University. Heidelberg, Koester, 1894. 

The neurasthenic may appear at first to be as capable as a healthy 
person, but he wearies quickly, is easily exhausted, and cannot shake off 
his fatigue; moreover, he is unduly susceptible to all stimuli, and this in 
turn reacts unfavorably upon his fatigue and capacity for exhaustion. 

Thus it is quite relevant ... to compare neurasthenia with fatigue 
and to define it as a pathological excess and fixity of fatigue. (Page 11.) 

Heightened irritability, then, on the one hand, and great weakness, 
fatigue, and tendency to exhaustion, with the resultant loss of efficiency, 
on the other, make up the picture of neurasthenia. 

These conditions may affect every part of the nervous system — brain, 
mind and spirit, organs of sense, spinal cord and sympathetic nerves, 
circulatory, digestive, and generative organs — in short, the entire body; 
but as they are by no means of identical extent in all organs, there results 
the inexhaustible variety of symptoms of neurasthenia. (Page 11.) 

Without a doubt, one of the most important fundamental requirements 



FATIGUE AND NERVOUS DISEASES 189 

of health is found in the correct alternations of work and rest. (Pages geri 
28-29.) 



Die Pathologic und Therapie der Neurasthenie. [Pathology and Thera- 
peutics of Neurasthenia.] Dr. Otto Binswanger, Professor of 
Psychiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Hospital at Jena. Jena, 
Fischer, 1896. 

(To the comprehension of neurasthenia) we must first clearly define a 
process which absolutely controls the pathogenesis of neurasthenia. This 
is fatigue, which, under pathological conditions, may be characterized by 
the terms "chronic fatigue" (Dauerermiidung) and exhaustion. . . . 

There will be complete reparation of the state of overfatigue which has 
not gone beyond physiological limits, while complete reparation or com- 
pensation for chronic fatigue can only be attained with difficulty after 
long periods of recuperation or, in many cases, it can never be fully at- 
tained. (Page 20.) 

If exertions are demanded of the chronically fatigued persons which 
bear no relation to his remaining supply of energy, a condition finally 
comes on in which the functional mechanism involved absolutely refuses 
to work. This condition we call exhaustion. It may be only transitory, 
or may remain fixed for a long time. (Page 21.) 

Pathological conditions of activity of the nervous system rest upon 
disturbances of the molecular mechanism which are capable of injuring, 
either temporarily or permanently, the legitimate play of forces — the 
physiological equilibrium between synthetic processes and those of oxida- 
tion. (Page 23.) 



Diseases of the Nervous System. H. Oppenheim, M.D., University of 
Berlin. Authorised translation hy Edward E. Mayer, A.M., M.D. 
Philadelphia and London, J. B. Lippincott Company, 1900. 

Neurasthenia, or Nervous Exhaustion, is a very common disease to-day, 
especially in the large cities. Even though it may have occurred at all 
times (and had been known for a long time as nervousness), it has without 
doubt increased in extent in the last years by the extra demands that have 
been made on man in his struggle for existence and in his social life. (Page 
703.) 

Those who work at night, even though they have plenty of time during 
the day for sleep, very often become neurasthenic. This refers to tele- 



190 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

.NY graph operators, night watchmen, compositors, etc. Working in over- 
heated rooms is also a cause. (Page 704.) 

Symptomatology. — The chief symptom of neurasthenia is the irritable 
weakness, — i. e., the abnormal excitability accompanied by exhaustion, 
the latter being predominant. The patient is irritable and easily excited; 
but the excitement, whether pleasurable or otherwise, soon leads to ex- 
haustion, producing and leaving a feeling of weakness and apathy. (Page 
704.) 

Fatigue, however, easily results, his ability for work is markedly 
abridged, and the least exertion exhausts him. The intensity and dura- 
tion of this fatigue are characteristic. It may be so marked that all 
mental work is rendered impossible. Occasionally the ability to conduct 
visual memory pictures to the brain, to remember the appearance of a 
certain person, place, or object, is greatly impaired. (Page 705.) 

Disorders of the special senses are also found and likewise bear the 
marks of increased sensitiveness and exhaustion. The eye and ear are 
particularly often affected. Seeing stars or spots (mouches volantes), a 
mist before the eyes, fatigue in reading ("the letters seem to swim or run 
together or dance before the eyes"), increased sensitiveness to noises, 
buzzing in the ears, ringing, whistling, or murmuring in front of the ears, 
etc., are frequent and painful and stubborn disorders. (Page 706.) 

Many of the "asthenopic disorders" — especially the onset of fatigue 
of the sight — are probably to a great extent due to an increased exhaustion 
of the muscles of accommodation and of the recti interni. Sight and 
hearing are not weakened, and an ophthalmoscopic examination never 
reveals any disease of the optic nerves. A moderate contraction of the 
visual field is also occasionally observed in cases of pure neurasthenia. 
A neurotic impairment of hearing may likewise be combined with it. 
(Page 707.) 

Of the motor disorders, the common symptoms are weakness (not 
paralysis), tremor, and slight fatigue, (Page 707.) 

The vasomotor disorders deserve special attention, being found in 
many patients. . . . The disturbances of the heart are closely allied to 
these vasomotor disorders. They may be subjective or objective. 
Palpitation of the heart is an important subjective symptom. . . . 
Acceleration of the heart may also be recognized objectively. (Page 
709.) 

Digestive Disorders. — These are prominent symptoms. Nervous 
dyspepsia is not an independent disease, but one of the most frequent forms 
in which neurasthenia expresses itself. (Page 712.) 



FATIGUE AND NERVOUS DISEASES I9I 

Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases. ITALY 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquen^a in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to Certain 
Forms of Labor.] Prof. Crisafulli. 

Mental fatigue with its two fundamental factors (excess of work and of 
excitation; insufficiency of rest and of recuperation) contributes largely 
to the pathogenesis of nervous industrial diseases. 

Excess of work (overwork) surrounds the nervous cellular tissue with 
the products of disintegration accentuating the auto-poisoning phenom- 
ena and, with them, the functional exhaustion and insufficient reintegra- 
tion of the nerve cells: in such a condition the whole metabolism changes, 
with evil consequences to the entire nervous organization especially be- 
cause the gray matter of the nerve centres "in the physiological state has 
a most active material metabolism." (Luciani.) (Page 151.) 



The Mental Symptoms of Fatigue. {Reprinted from the Transactions of the Elates 
New York State Medical Association.) Edward Cowles, M.D., 
Medical Superintendent of the McLean Hospital, Somerville, Mass. 
New York, Fless and Ridge, 1893. 

Normal fatigue from the discharge of tissue energy is shown to be in- 
separably accompanied by toxic products that contribute to the effects of 
fatigue. Pathological fatigue represents a further development and per- 
sistence of this condition in the organism. Stimulation too soon repeated, 
without giving time for rest and repair, finds nerve cells in fatigued areas 
having less power to act because of inanition from deficient rest and 
nourishment; they are also hindered in action by the incomplete removal 
of the toxic products of previous action. Then assimilation is further 
hindered, first, by the lessened nutritive quality of the blood from the 
presence of non-eliminated toxic materials; and second, by the probable 
toxic weakening of the cells' power to assimilate the nutrition that is 
furnished to them. The development of a manifestly morbid condition 
may be very slow and insidious, or more rapid, according as the balance 
of the processes of constructive and regressive metabolism are more or less 
on the side of impoverishment, exhaustion, and weakness. From the 
gradually failing elimination, the local inanition may become more general, 
and the first results are an increased excitability from weakened resistance 
and inhibition, with a quick exhaustion of the nervous system under 
exercise. These are the constant characteristics of neurasthenia. Thus, 
as Knowalewsky says, "a locally limited over-strain of a certain part of 



UNITED 
STATES 



192 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



the nervous system may lead to general exhaustion and neurasthenia." 
Hence neurasthenia has been defined by Ziemssen as a functional weakness 
of the nervous system, varying from the slightest degrees in simple locali- 
ties to entire loss of strength in the whole nervous system." Arndt states 
the characteristics of neurasthenia to be "increased excitability with a 
tendency to rapid fatigue, especially of the muscular system." (Page 7.) 



D. Bad Effect of Long Hours on Safety 
(1) Incidence of Accidents 

Emphasis is laid upon the need of Hmiting excessive 
working hours for women by the increased danger from 
accidents during certain hours of work. 

The statistics of all countries which have recorded the 
hours in which industrial accidents occur, show that the 
number of accidents tends to rise after a certain number 
of hours of work, and that the fatigue of the workers subtly 
influences the accident rate. 



FRANCE Revue Scientifique. 4^ Juin, 1904. Les Accidents du Travail ei les Com- 

pagnies d' Assurances. [Industrial Accidents and Insurance.] Prof. 
A. Imbert, University of Montpellier. Paris, 1904. 

The law of 1898 upon the accidents of industry is now six years old 
... it is one of the most beneficent of the Republic . . . and should aid 
in solving social questions. (Page 711.) 

The number of accidents, as a matter of fact, does not depend only on 
the number of workmen or the kind of work, but, it must be reiterated, 
depends also in large measure on the organization of labor and the qualities 
of the human machine. More explicitly, many accidents result from the 
physical or mental fatigue of the workman at the moment, and this as- 
sertion can easily be proved by innumerable instances. (Page 715.) 

The imminence of an accident is usually made manifest to workmen 
by some occurrence, which, by the peripheral excitation of sight, sound, 
or sensation, is made known to the brain. There is often only an in- 
appreciable time in which this message may be conveyed to the brain 
and the necessary stimulus sent forth to the muscles to execute by rapid 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 



193 



and energetic contractions the movements necessary for defence or re- France 
treat. 

The exact time necessary for each of these successive acts has never 
been precisely estimated, but enough is known to demonstrate that a 
workman who is in a condition of mental or physical fatigue does not 
respond as quickly to such stimuli, but that each such act takes a longer 
time than would otherwise be true. Certain elements of the whole phe- 
nomenon may be studied separately. Thus one knows that that rapidity 
of muscular contractility and consequently the quickness of the motion 
made by a muscle diminishes with the time during which the muscle is 
made to contract, while the intensity of the contraction also diminishes 
proportionately. 

One result of this fact is that fatigue renders the workman less apt to 
avoid accident, since he cannot make as intense an effort as usual nor 
execute movements of his normal rapidity. (Page 715.) 

In order to fmd corroboration of the theory that the number of acci- 
dents would increase with fatigue I asked M. Mestre, inspector of labor 
in the department of Herault, to record the accidents in his district during 
1903 by the hours of the day in which they occurred. 

These statistics are to be published soon, and it is enough to say here 
that they all, without exception, verify what has been said, as shown by 
this table: 

Transportation 

Total number employed, 6695 workmen. Whole number of accidents in 

1903, 660. 



AccmENTS IN THE MoRNING 


Accidents in the Afternoon 


Hours 


Numbers 


Hours 


Numbers 


7 A. M. 


25 


1 p. M. 


18 


8 " 


30 


2 " 


40 


9 " 


20 


3 " 


45 


10 " 


57 


5 " 


105 


11 " 


63 


5 " 


118 



Two facts are shown very clearly by this table of figures, namely, the 
considerable share played by fatigue in producing accidents and the 
equally important influence, in the inverse sense, of the midday hour of 
rest. (Page 716.) 
13* 



194 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE Revue Scientifique. Paris, 24^ Septenibre, 1904. Statistiques d' Accidents 

du Travail. [Statistics of Industrial Accidents.] Prof. A. Imbert, 
University of Montpellier, and M. Mestre, Factory Inspector, Herault. 
Paris, 1904. 

The law requires notice to be given of every accident that necessitates 
more than four days' loss of work. These records are kept in the oificial 
headquarters for each department, and we have utilized these oificial 
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NOON MIO 

NIGHT 

Fig. 63. 



The heavy line represents 660 accidents and 6,695 workmen in transportation. 

These men are licensed. 
The broken line shows 326 accidents and 1,453 workmen in chemical works. 
The dotted line shows 189 accidents and 4,528 men in woodworking industries. 

(Page 386.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 



195 



Figure 63 shows in the heavy line, the 660 accidents that happened france 
only in the occupations of Transportation, comprising 6,695 workmen. 
General indications of this curve are: 

1. The number of accidents increases progressively from hour to hour 
during the first half-day. 

2. The number of accidents in the first part of the second half-day, after 
the noon rest, is noticeably less than that of the final hour of the first half- 
day. 

3. In the course of the second half-day accidents become progressively 
more numerous with every hour. 

4. The maximum num.ber of accidents per hour is notably greater in 
the latter part of the second half-day than in the latter part of the first 
half-day. 

Herault, 1903 



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NOON MID 

NIGHT 

Fig. 64. 

Here the heavy line shows building trades and stone work: 280 accidents, 4,686 

workmen. 
The broken line shows the ordinary metal trades: 149 accidents, 3,237 workmen. 
The dotted line shows commerce and banking: 237 accidents and 15,567 men. 

(Page 387.) 



In order to verify the conclusions suggested by this chart we inquired 
into the proportion of accidents in other industries. 



196 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE M. Leroy, the division inspector of labor at Toulouse, then voluntarily 

sent us the result of similar statistics which he had had made by the 
departmental inspectors under his orders, viz., in Ande, Ariege, etc., etc. 
Without reproducing here all the curves which show these various statistics 
it is sufficient to state that all, without exception, presented the general 
characteristics which are displayed by the charts here shown. (Page 387.) 
Since fatigue is the inevitable accompaniment of all expended energy, 
and as it cannot be suppressed without at the same time suppressing all 
^ labor, it is at least important to limit it and not allow it to attain that de- 
gree at which its influence in producing accidents is eminently evil. (Page 
388.) 

Figure 65 shows in heavy line 2,065 accidents among 56,458 workmen 
of Herault, and the dotted line shows 5,534 accidents among 140,407 

Fig. 65. — Chart Showing the Occurrence of Accidents according to Hours 

OF Day. 



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accidents. 
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5,534 accidents. 

(Page Zd>d>.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY I97 

workmen of 9 departments in the region of Toulouse, drawn according to France 
hours. (Page 388.) 

Revue Scientifique, 21^ Odobre, 1905. Hygiene Puhlique. Nouvelles 
Statistiques d' Accidents du Travail. [Public Hygiene. New Statistics 
of Industrial Accidents.] M. A. Imbert, University of Montpellier, 
and M. Mestre, Factory Inspector in Herault. 

Fatigue being the inevitable consequence of work, accidents must 
inexorably increase from hour to hour. It remains only to investigate 
the rapidity of this increase, in order to find out whether or no it is clearly 
to the general interest to modify in any way the division of working hours. 
If our figures have come as the revelation of an unexpected fact to those 
who are little informed as to the functioning of the human motor machine, 
they nevertheless gave only one indication that was really new, and that 
is, that in most trades the conditions of work cause a rapid rise in the 
number of accidents to the hour, from the beginning to the end of each 
half day. ... Of the objections made to our charts only one has some 
truth, viz., that it is too simple to consider fatigue only as the cause of 
accidents in industry. To this we answer that we have never said that 
fatigue alone intervened to bring on accidents. It is quite possible that, 
aside from pure chance, other causes would act on parallel lines. How- 
ever, either such other existing causes would have a gradual influence, and 
we cannot then see how they would exercise their activity except by en- 
gendering a more precocious and intense fatigue; or, they would make 
themselves felt in a relatively short time, and could then only bring about 
some irregularity in some limited sections of our charts. (Page 520.) 
... As to the causes of the second order, it was to eliminate their irregu- 
larities that we drew the line representing all of the 5,534 accidents be- 
falling the 140,407 workmen who, in 1903, were affected by the accident 
compensation law of 1898. Irregularities found upon the charts showing 
single trades would then disappear, as (they disappear) on chart No. 74, 
which represents the division according to hours of the 3,352 accidents 
that occurred in 1904 in the department of Herault, Aveyron, Lozere, 
Cantal and Tarn, and we simply stated that the general features of the 
chart were strictly explainable by the action of fatigue. ... As to the 
proposal to bring a half hour of rest into each of the two halves of the 
working day, it seems to us that, in all trades where the workman is not 
in charge of a steadily running machine, this should not be difficult. As 
to trades where it would present serious difficulties, there is another remedy 
that might be proposed, and which should not be rejected until its probable 



198 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE effects had been well considered; that is, cutting off the last hour of the 

working day, or even the establishment of the eight-hour day. (Page 
521.) 

Fig. 74. — Number of Accidents by Hours of the Day 
Year 1904. All Industries. Total Accidents, 3,352 



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Scale of Accidents. 
From 1 to 5 A. m., 118 Accidents. After 6 to Midnight, 151 Accidents. 

(Page 521.) 



We are led to this view by the physiological study of occupation fatigue, 
and do not intend to discuss thoroughly this urgent social problem of 
reducing hours of labor which must be approached from many points of 
view, but we will simply show one side of it. . . . Observe in the first 
place that the plan of dropping off the last hour of the day's work, crude 
and simple though it may be, would have as its minimum effect the pre- 
vention of all those accidents that would otherwise occur in the final hour 
of work. Now, according to one general chart for September, 1904, these 
accidents form \ (one-seventh) or \ (one-eighth) of all (750 in 5,534), 
and the proportion is substantially the same for the year 1904. This 
immediate effect, then, would be considerable. It would mean an 
important reduction in the loss of social energy, — a loss which is partly 
temporary and partly permanent. (Page 521.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY I99 

Ministere du Travail et de la Prevoyance Sociale, Bulletin de V Inspection FRANCE 
du Travail et de VHygiene Industrielle. 1906. Numero 3-4. Paris, 
1906. Travaux originaux des Inspecteurs. [Btilletin of the Labor 
Department. Leaflets, 3-4. Original Contributions of the Inspectors.] 
Etude sur les Accidents du Travail. [A Study of Industrial Accidents.] 
M. Le Roy, Division Factory Inspector, Toulouse. Paris, 1906. 

In a report made in 1903 by M. Mestre, he said: . . . "Accidents 
were divided into two categories, viz. : 

1. Those that might have been foreseen; preventable. 2. Those 
which could not be foreseen; not preventable. 

It seems to me, however, that it is proper to take another factor into 
account, a factor which is so much more serious in that it dominates in all 
accidents augmenting their frequency, or sometimes aggravating their 
effects. This factor is fatigue. 

It is indisputable in fact, that the more fatigued a worker is the more 
liable he is to accident. The accident is then the consequence of the 
combined results of physical depression, relaxed attention and less rapid 
movements." (Page 219.) 

Struck by the statements and charts of Dr. Imbert ... I secured 
data from the various inspectors of my district during two years. . . . 
My conclusions were identical with those arrived at by M. Mestre. I 
prepared charts for 1903 and 1904, first for each separate industry and 
then for all together, and the results to my mind leave no doubt of the 
merits of the conclusions drawn by Imbert and Mestre from their inquiries. 
I am familiar with the objection that, as fewer men are at work at certain 
hours than others it is not surprising there should be more accidents at 
one time than another. . . . However, between 7 and 11 a. m. and 2 and 
5 p. M. all workmen who work by day, either summer or winter, are at 
work, so that the record of those hours must be of real importance. 

In the charts, the hours form the abscisses and the accidents represent 
the ordinates. . . . We then fmd that the number of accidents increased 
progressively from hour to hour in each of the two working periods, fore- 
noon and afternoon, reaching their maxima at 10 a. m. and 4 p. m. We fmd 
also that accidents are more frequent in the second half than in the first 
half of the day, and that they are much less numerous in the morning and 
after the rest pause than at the end of the preceding periods. (Page 221.) 

Leaving out of consideration those groups of but few workmen . . . 
and those where the possibilities of accidents are slight . . . and those 
textiles where, thanks to legal requirements of safety devices, accidents 
formerly so frequent have been reduced from 1.4 per cent in 1903 to 1.1 
per cent in 1904 ... we have left those groups whose members are 



200 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

FRANCE obliged to exert physical force. ... In 1904, when the statistics were 
absolutely complete, we find, in transportation, from 7 to 11 a. m., an 
increasing progression up to 10 o'clock, that is 71, 75, 117, and 140 acci- 
dents; and in the afternoon from 1 to 5 o'clock, the same thing up to 4 
o'clock, viz., 50, 79, 143, 196. At 5, the number fell to 162 accidents. 

In building and masonry, etc., we find, in short, a maximum of 187 
accidents in 1903 and 160 in 1904 attained progressively by 10 a. m., and, 
on resumption of work, 227 (maximum) in 1903 at 5 p. m. and 194 (maxi- 
mum) in 1904 at 4 p. M. . . . All these data bring us necessarily to a con- 
sideration of fatigue as one of the chief causes of accidents . . . and the 
data of the metal trades, showing higher figures in the morning only confirm 
this view because by the division of labor here into three shifts the hours 
at which the men change bring the same proofs as to the effects of fatigue 
(one shift works by day and the others change at midnight and noon). 

But physical fatigue is not the only thing to consider. We must 
remember also the cerebral fatigue of the workman who is constrained to 
long daily hours of work at monotonous tasks. This fatigue induces a 
nervous depression which is betrayed by inattention, very often resulting 
in accident. It is precisely this form of fatigue that explains the increas- 
ing progression of accidents with the progress of working hours in industries 
where work is most often limited to watching the machinery. (Page 222.) 

The anomaly of the last hour being less heavily charged with accidents 
is explainable in two ways: 

1. In many industries, as is well known, there is a certain slackening 
of activity and the last hour is the least productive. 

2. In others, the workman has a spurt of energy as the closing time 
approaches. 

. . . The plan adopted in Austria, where each working period is divided 
by a half-hour's rest, has, if we may judge by the statistics that are pub- 
lished, resulted in a sensible diminution of the number of accidents in the 
hour following the resting time. 

France also should try some organization of industry which would tend 
to eliminate that vast number of accidents due to the physical and cerebral 
fatigue of the worker. (Page 223.) 

BELGIUM Royaume de Belgiqiie. Ministere de V Industrie et du Travail. Rapports 
Annuels de V Inspection du Travail, 1907. [Annual Reports of the 
Belgian Factory Inspection, 1907.] Brussels, Lehegue, 1908. 

The accompanying charts show the proportion of accidents according 
to the days of the week and the hours of the day. (Page 204.) (4th 
District: Ghent.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 



201 



Textile industries cause 39.6 per cent of all the accidents in industrial BELGIUM 
establishments . . . and the whole number of accidents in industrial 
establishments forms 72 per cent of all accidents. (Page 206.) 

Accidents for the Year, 1907 
Showing the Hourly Average by Days of Week 





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Annual Report of the Belgian Factory Inspectors for 1907. Brussels, 1908. (Pages 
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FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 







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(Pages 204-205.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-32. Report from the Select 
Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

James Blundell, Esq., M.D. . . . Lecturer on Physiology and Mid- 
wifery in the School of Guy's Hospital: 

10881. May not the numerous and afflicting accidents which occur 
more particularly at the end of the day, and are observed to increase 
toward the termination of the week, be fairly attributed to this over- 
fatigue and lassitude? I think they may. (Page 125.) 

[See also 2590, p. 99. 6944, p. 293. 6875, p. 294. 7488, p. 325. 
4328, p. 165. 5010, p. 270. 10881, p. 545. 10945, p. 550. 11494, p. 596. 
11579, p. 604.] 



Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIII. 1844. 

Lord Ashley: 

"Those honourable gentlemen who have been m the habit of perusing 
the melancholy details of mill accidents should know that a large propor- 
tion of those accidents — particularly those which may be denominated 
the minor class, such as loss of fmgers and the like — occur in the last hours 
of the evening, when the people become so tired that they absolutely get 
reckless of the danger. I state this on the authority of several practical 
spinners. Hence arise many serious evils to the working classes, none 
greater than the early prostration of their strength." (Page 1082.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

One can only feel surprise that accidents are not more numerous (in 
laundries), when one realizes that the slightest carelessness or inattention 



BRITAIN 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 203 

may result in the fingers or hand being drawn between the hot cylinders, great 
and when one considers how easily such inattention may arise in the case 
of the over-tired young workers. (Page 383.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1904. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

The comparative immunity from accidents in the laundries in the West 
Riding of Yorkshire may be possibly due in some measure to the moderate 
hours of employment. 

The incidence of accidents according to time of day is somewhat sur- 
prising, the most dangerous hours apparently being 11 a. m. to 12 noon 
and 4 to 6 p. M. . . . Probably 11 a. m. to 12 noon is more generally than 
any other time the last tiring hour of a day five hours' spell; 4-6 p. m. 
covers the time when most generally the transition is from daylight to 
artificial light. (Pages 210-211.) 

Reference was also made (in the Thirteenth International Congress 
of Hygiene and Demography), although figures were not adduced, to the 
alleged increase in the number of accidents which occur late in the work- 
ing day when the effects of intellectual and physical fatigue have made 
themselves apparent. (Page 298.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1905. Report of the Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops. 

Again I think the effect of fatigue is shown in the last hour before 
midday and during 12 to 1 o'clock. Fatigue again appears to be a cause 
of accidents in the later period of the afternoon spell. (Page 250.) 



Infant Mortality: A Social Problem. George Newman, M.D., D.P.H., 
F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Public Health at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
London. Medical Officer of Health, Metropolitan Borough, Finsbury. 
London, Methuen, 1906. 

The results of fatigue become manifest in various ways, not the least 
being the occurrence of accidents or of physical breakdown. The former, 
as is now well recognized, occur most frequently in fatigued workers. 
For example, since 1900 there has been a steady, though not marked, 
increase in the number of accidents to women over eighteen years of age 
in laundries. In 1900 such accidents numbered 131; in 1904, 157. Now 



204 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



it has been shown that whilst the first half of the day yields about the 
same number of accidents as the second half, more accidents, amounting 
to nearly double the number, occur between the hours of 11 a. m. and 1 
p. M. and between 4 p. m. and 7 p. m. than at any other time of the day. 
(Pages 112-113.) 



AUSTRIA Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, 

1894. Vol. VII, Sec. V. Cher das Verhdltniss der Dauer des Ar- 
heitstages {ur Gesundheit des Arheiters und dessen Einfluss auf die 
offentliche Gesundheit. [The Length of the Working Day in its Rela- 
tion to the Workman's Health and its Influence upon Public Health.] 
Dr. E. R. J. Krejcsi, Vice-Secretary of the Cham.her of Commerce in 
Budapest. Budapest, 1896. 

The most valuable special statistics bearing upon the subject of fatigue 
are those of the trade-accidents kept by the accident insurance oifices. 
The ones that chiefly merit notice are those of the German Imperial In- 
surance Department published in 1890, of the accidents for 1887 dis- 
tributed over the hours of the day when they occurred. 

From these data it may be seen how greatly accidents increase as the 
fatigue of the worker increases. (Page 327.) 

{Amtliche Nachrichten des Reich s-Versicherungsamtes, VI. Jahrg., Ber- 
lin, 1890. P. 280 et seq.) 

Daywork 



Morning 


IVhole No. 
of Accidents 


Percentage 


Afternoon 


Whole No. 
of Accidents 


Percentage 


6- 7 A. M. 


435 


2.83 


12-1 p. M. 


587 


3.74 


7- 8 " 


794 


5.16 


1-2 " 


745 


4.84 


8- 9 " 


815 


5.29 


2-3 " 


1037 


6.73 


9-10 " 


1069 


6.94 


3-4 " 


1243 


8.07 


10-11 " 


1598 


10.38 


4-5 " 


1178 


7.65 


11-12 noon 


1590 


10.32 


5-6 " 


1306 


8.48 



Similar figures are shown by the General Workman's Sickness and Re- 
lief Insurance in Vienna, and some recent tables have been communicated 
to me by Dr. Leo Verkauf before their publication. 

They are as follows: 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 
Daywork 



205 



Morning 


mole No. 
of Accidents 


Percentage 


Afternoon 


mole No. 
of Accidents 


Percentage 


6- 7 A. M. 

7- 8 " 

8- 9 " 
9-10 " 

10-11 pause 
11-12 noon 


187 
437 
517 
716 
505 
338 


3.01 
7.03 
8.31 
11.51 
8.12 
5.43 


12-1 p. M. 
1-2 " 
2-3 " 
3-4 " 
4-5 pause 
5-6 " 


82 
331 
538 
700 
508 
418 


1.32 
5.32 
8.65 
11.25 
8.17 
6.72 



(Page 328.) 



AUSTRIA 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
Sept. 1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Die Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. 
[Fatigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Roth. Berlin, Hirschwald, 
1908. 

That the fluctuations of the mental tone in course of working hours 
influence not only the worker's capacity but render him more liable to 
accident by producing a mental apathy or indifference as a result of weari- 
ness is also a fact too seldom understood or acknowledged. 

It is readily explained, for the fatigued workman cannot give that close 
attention to safety appliances and machine guards that a normally re- 
sistant worker can give. In regard to the frequency of accidents, proof of 
the statement made above is furnished by the statistics of the Imperial 
Insurance Department for 1887 and 1897. Here the relation between the 
length of working time and progressive uncertainty of control over muscles, 
as well as the relaxation of mental tone, is made clear in the statistics of 
1897, which noted the hours when accidents occurred. The three final 
morning hours show twice as many accidents as the first ones, and the 
final afternoon hours, from 3 to 6, were also more disastrous than the first 
part of the afternoon. Taking the authentic statement that, on an aver- 
age, an accident occurs in every three hours throughout the year, the 
following tables show the variations: 



GERMANY 



A. M. hours from 
P. M. " 



6 to 9- 
9 " 12- 

12 " 3- 
3 " 6- 



-1.10 accidents 

-2.36 

-1.02 

-2.11 



(Page 618.) 



Professor Imbert has also stated that his observations show that acci- 
dents occur in parallel lines with the extent of working time and reach the 
highest proportion at the end of overtime. (Page 619.) 



206 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
1907. Vol. IV. Discussions on Section IV. 

Dr. Roth (Potsdam): 

We know by the imperial statistics that most accidents happen in the 
fmal hours of work, and I have no doubt at all that, if it were possible to 
make similar computations in the matter of illness, we should fmd that 
most cases of sickness, especially those of poisonous origin, have their 
starting point in the fmal working hours. That which is often ascribed 
to the carelessness of the worker is in reality in numberless cases the result 
of oncoming fatigue. (Page 290.) 



Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of Politi- 
cal Science, Vol. I.] Edited hy Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of Political 
Science in Halle; L. Elster, Oher Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. Lexis, 
Professor of Political Science in Gottingen, and Edg. Loening, Pro- 
fessor of Law in Halle. Arheitsieit. [Hours of JVork.] Dr. H. 
Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

The exhausted workman no longer has full control over his muscles. 
His results are less exact. Danger by accident increases. If it is reckoned 
that, on an average, one accident takes place every 3 hours throughout 
the year, then, according to the German Accident Statistics of 1887 and 
1897, the numbers of accidents between the hours 6 to 9 a. m. form 1.10%; 
from 9 to noon, 2.36%; from noon to 3 p. m., 1.02%; and from 3 to 6 
P.M., 2.11%. 

Professor Imbert has also shown that in the occupations noted by him 
the numbers of accidents reached their highest point near the end of work- 
ing hours. (Page 1214.) 



Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. 1895. [Official Information from Reports of the {German) 
Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, 1896. 

The ten-hour day, with the exceptions necessary for certain trades, is 
a measure which can be introduced without great diificulty, and which 
would prevent many dangers threatening the health of workers. Many 
accidents are no doubt due to the relaxed vigilance and lessening of bodily 
strength following excessive hours of work. (Page 369.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 2O7 

Amtliche Mittleilungen aus deyi Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- GERMANY 
beamten. XXIII. 1898. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors, 1898.] Berlin, 1899. 

The inspector for Wurttemberg remarks that some accidents are doubt- 
less incurred by the extreme demands made upon the endurance of the 
men: it is readily conceivable that overtired workers easily commit mis- 
takes resulting in accidents. (Page 182.) 

The inspector for Wurttemberg II, amongst a number of explanations of 
accidents, mentions overstrain of the workman as one cause. (Page 182.) 



Jahreshericht der Grossherioglich Badischen Fabrikinspektion fUr das Jahr 
1900. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1900.] Carlsruhe, 
Thiergarten, 1901. 

It would seem superfluous to speak of the increase in the numbers of 
accidents due to overfatigue which is brought on by excessive working 
hours, for the thing is self-evident. (Page 30.) 



Jahreshericht der Grossher^oglich Badischen Fabrikinspektion filr das Jahr 
1903. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1903.] Carlsruhe, 
Thiergarten, 1904. 

Positive deductions as to accidents can only be made if the statistics 
for a number of years show a certain uniformity. At present it looks as if 
Monday (because Sunday is not always used for real rest), and Saturday, 
on account of the physical overtension caused by the week's work, were 
especially liable to accidents. 

The accidents that occur between 6 and 8 p. m. are, as a rule, not in the 
beginning of night shifts but at the end of day shifts. The unfavorable 
influence of the final hours of work is, therefore, greater than is shown in 
the tables which make the day's work appear to close at 6 p. m. (Page 66.) 

Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsheamten und Bergbehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1904. Bd. I. Preussen. [Reports of the (German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1904. Vol. I., Prussia.] Berlin, Decker, 1905. 

A workman's arm was crushed in an accident. ... It was the belief 
of the inspector that this accident was directly traceable to overfatigue, 
brought on by the excessive length of the hours during which this man had 
been kept at his post. . . . (Page I^^^.) 



208 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Jahresbevtcht der Grossher^oglich Badischen Fabrikinspektion fiir das 
Jahr 1905. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1905.] Carls- 
ruhe, Thiergarten, 1906. 

The readily explainable preponderance of accidents on Mondays and 
Saturdays is evident in this, as in former reports. . . . The evening hours 
seem to be especially favorable for the occurrence of accidents. (Page 
90.) 

Amtliche Nachrichten des Reich s-Fersicherungsamts, 1910. I. Beiheft. I . 
Teil. Gewerhe-Unfallstatistik fiir das Jahr 1907. [Reports of the 
Imperial Insurance Department. 1910. Appendix I. Part I. 
Statistics of Industrial Accidents for the year 1907.] 

Number and Per Cent of Injured Persons who had been at Work Each 
Specified Number of Hours on the Day of the Accident, for Metal- 
working Industries and for all Industries in Germany, 1907 



Number of Hours Injured 

Persons Had Been 

at Work 


Metal-working 
Industries 


All Industries 


Number 
Reported 


Per cent 


Number 
Reported 


Per cent 


Less than 1 

1 and under 2 . . ... 


88 
125 
133 
209 
199 
135 
116 
161 
141 
109 
103 


5.79 

8.23 

8.76 

13.76 

13.10 

8.89 

7.64 

10.60 

9.28 

7.18 

6.77 


3,939 
6,885 
7,351 
9,004 
9,739 
8,106 
6,462 
6,908 
6,817 
6,041 
8,539 


4.94 
8 63 


2 and under 3 


9.21 


3 and under 4 

4 and under 5 

5 and under 6 


11.28 
12.20 
10.16 


6 and under 7 


8.10 


7 and under 8 


8.66 


8 and under 9 


8.54 


9 and under 10 


7.57 


10 and over 


10.71 






Total 


1,519 


100.00 


79,791 


100.00 







(Page 329.) 



SWITZER. 
LAND 



Sixth International Congress of Hygienic and Demography. Vienna, 1887. 
Part XIV. Fahrikhygiene und Geset^gebung. [Factory Hygiene and 
Legislation.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector. 
Vienna, 1887. 



. . . Excessive work and fatigue leads to dulness, nerve tension re- 
laxes. Observation grows dull and accidents result. . . . (Page 36.) 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 209 

// Ramaiiini, Giornali Italiano, di Medicina Sociale. Anno I, Fasc. ITALY 
10-11. [Italian Journal of Social Medicine, October to November, 
1907.] Le stagioni, i giorni, le ore degli infortuni del lavoro. [Seasons, 
Days, and Hours when Industrial Accidents Occur.] Professor G. 
PiERACCiNi and Dr. R. Maffei, Head Physicians in the Royal Main 
Hospital of S. M. Nuova in Florence. 

We made an investigation of the workmen employed in the machine 
shops of the railways of Italy and the accidents incident to their work in the 
five years, from 1901 to 1905. 

Florence, accidents 2509; Verona, 1671; Bologna, 214; Foggia, 229 
Naples, 173; Rimini, 170; Lucca, 100; Pontassieve, 71; Rome, 62 
Ancona, 40; Milan, 38; Venice, 43; Pistoja, 32; Lecco, 30; Sulmona, 25 
Castellamare, 22; Brescia, 15; Forte, 14; Bari, 12; other cities, such as 
Foligno, Ferni, Cremona, Udine, Vicenza, Padova, etc., a number less 
than 10. 

We divided the accidents into two groups, one of which comprises only 
the accidents in the machine shops of Florence, while the other includes 
all the scattered shops in the above-mentioned cities. 

In our deductions we fmd the greatest number of accidents in the 
Florentine group, because it has fewer heterogeneous elements. But 
since this group is numerically too small (2509) to allow of accurate de- 
ductions, we add to this first group the other larger one (3058), of accidents 
in the other machine shops of the Italian railways. 

The combined numbers of the two groups are sufficiently homogeneous: 
first, because they include the same dangerous work or groups of related 
work; secondly, because the workers are all of the same sex (male); 
thirdly, because no worker is under 16 years, only a few from 16 to 20, 
while very few are more than 60; fourthly, because they live and work 
under conditions similar, or nearly so, to their usual life and customs as 
regards education and culture, temperature, and social surroundings. 
(Pages 548-549.) 

Industrial accidents are more numerous in the morning hours than in 
the afternoon, and have a marked tendency to increase in direct propor- 
tion to the lengthening of the working day. Omitting the first and last 
hours of work for reasons already mentioned (/. e. because fewer workmen 
are present), so as to be exact in our conclusions, it is evident that there is 
an increase as follows: 

206K accidents in the 2nd hour 

258 " " " 3rd " 

324K " " " 4th " 

323 " " " 5th " (Page 580.) 



210 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY The protraction of the hours of labor raises the number of accidents with 

each successive hour, in both the first and in the second half of the day. It 
remains now to trace the causal element, or elements, of the phenomenon. 

There is no doubt that in brain or muscle work, as in any energetic 
action of our organism, there is a consumption of dynamogenic material, 
while the products of normal organic metabolism, which increase during 
work, act on the animal economy as poisons. 

This condition of things, which only food and rest can correct and re- 
move, and which occurs regularly in the daily work of the toiler, will, 
as time progresses, after a few hours of work, show its effect on the worker. 

These facts are scientifically demonstrated by a complete series of 
experiments with the ergograph, among which are those of Kronecker, 
Mosso, Maggiore, Treves, Joteiko, Casarini, etc. 

. . . We must admit a destruction of oxydizable material in our or- 
ganism, a corresponding condition of auto-intoxication, or a febrile, painful 
condition proportioned to the duration and intensity of a mental or 
physical task. . . . And since the work of a machinist is both brain and 
muscle work, as it requires muscular strength, close attention, and dili- 
gent application, and also sometimes mental effort, we may reasonably 
admit that a protraction of the hours of labor faises the figure of accidents; 
because, with the protraction of the work, the worker becomes first 
fatigued, and then exhausted. (Pages 580-582.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

The statistics of accidents show that the organism imperceptibly 
reaches in the fifth hour of work such a degree of exhaustion that the 
power of observation is considerably diminished; accidents occur two or 
three times as frequently during this fifth hour as in the first hours of 
work. (Pages 65-66.) 



Report on Condition of Woman and Child IVage-Earners in the United 
States. Vol. XI. Employment of Women in the Metal Trades. Sen- 
ate Document No. 645, 61st Congress, 2nd Session, 1911. 

This table combines the results obtained from the records of 19 estab- 
lishments engaged in metal manufacture, 126 cotton mills for a period of 
one year, and one cotton mill for a period of eight years,* the unpublished 
records of the Indiana Department of Factory Inspection for three years, 
and the published tabulation of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor. f 

* Cotton Textile Industry, Vol. 1 of the report, p. 395. 

t Fourteenth Biennial Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial 
Statistics. 1909-10, Part II, p. 78. 



BAD EFFECT OF LONG HOURS ON SAFETY 



21 I 





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UNITED 
STATES 



212 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED The establishments from which records were obtained employed 11,178 

&iAiii,t> ^^jg^ ^^^ 3 yg^ females, a total of 14,959. Since the records were ob- 

tained for an average period of 3.47 years, this represents workers to the 
number of 51,908 laboring for one year. The number working in the 
cotton mills for one year was 64,571, and the single mill for eight years 
represents 10,816 working for one year. In all 127,295 worker years are 
represented by the portion of the table based upon records gathered at 
first hand. (Page 95.) 

In this table the period from 7 a. m. to 12 noon is one of almost perfectly 
uniform employment. The entire force is, except for cases of injury or 
illness or other causes of absenteeism, at work. These absences will, of 
course, in so large a group be distributed over the hours regularly and so 
not disturb the number of persons exposed. 

The period from 1 to 5 in the afternoon is of nearly the same character. 
The last hour is clearly influenced by a lessening number of people em- 
ployed. Very many establishments close at some point between 5 and 6, 
either constantly or at some period of the year. This undoubtedly ac- 
counts in large measure for the lessened number of accidents during that 
hour, as compared with the last hour of the morning. (Pages 96-97.) 

. . . Apparently the accident rate is a complex product, dependent 
on a variety of factors, concerning which we have as yet little information. 
One factor which probably has a very marked influence is the rate 
of production. It is a truism that the faster a machine operates, other 
things being equal, the greater the danger of accident from it. (Page 98.) 

. . . Any increase of speed of operation, unless accompanied by some 
counteracting safeguard, may be expected to show a higher accident rate. 
That such increase of speed during part or all of the work period is the 
general practise is common opinion. . . . 

It is evident that in the interrelation of influences acting upon the 
situation now one and now another may be dominant. The most con- 
stant factor will be fatigue. It will be present in varying proportion in 
every case. It may act with the tendency to increase speed to produce a 
greater number of accidents. It may in the end become so pronounced 
that speed is reduced and the accident rate lowered. 

It is safe probably to offer as a provisional hypothesis that the imme- 
diate cause of a variation in the accident rate through the hours of the day 
is the varying rate of activity. Fatigue then comes in as an important 
secondary factor, serving sometimes to increase the accident rate, some- 
times to decrease it. 

There will be some tendency to minimize the factor of fatigue in the 
above process, because it is not a matter of acute sensation. We can 



FATIGUE OF ATTENTION 213 

recognize, and measure with some accuracy, the gradual increase of the united 

• . . . T . STATES 

fatigued condition before sensation begins to advise of its presence. It 
is a steadily progressive process. It gradually upsets those nice adjust- 
ments of the living organism upon which depend efficient labor and the 
safety of the worker. The margin of safety in modern industry is small. 
It is measured too frequently by fractions of an inch. Reduce the alert- 
ness and the exactness with which the body responds to the necessities 
of its labor, and by just so much have you increased the liability that the 
hand will be misplaced that fraction which means mutilation. (Pages 
100-101.) 

(2) Fatigue of Attention 

After fatigue has set in, the faculty of attention is in in- 
verse ratio to the duration and intensity of work under- 
taken. Attention is always accompanied by a sensation 
of effort, and fatigue of attention is due to the continu- 
ance of the efforts and the difficulty of sustaining them. 

Physiological reaction time is the name given to the 
interval between the occurrence of some external phe- 
nomenon and the signal of its having been perceived by 
any given individual. This interval is greatly influenced 
by fatigue. When the brain is fatigued, attention flags 
and reaction time is retarded. Hence, after overexertion 
fatigued workmen are subject to increased danger when 
reaction time is slowest and attention at its minimum. 



Revue Internationale de Sociologie. Novembre, 1895. Le Travail Humain ITALY 
et ses Lois. [The Laws of Human IVork.] Francesco S. Nitti, 
University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1895. 

Certain writers have observed that accidents are more frequent in the 
later than in the first hours of work. Ordinarily this significant fact is 
attributed entirely to psychic causes — to the lack of interest and assiduity 
of the workman — whilst it actually arises from a purely physiological 
fact, namely, that attention is always in an inverse ratio to the duration 
and intensity of work. It may be taken as a fixed law that all work has a 
limit beyond which, if effort continues, attention decreases and tends to dis- 
appear completely. (Page 1030.) 



214 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

ITALY '' This is a fact that every one can prove. 

A captain tells me that at the beginning of a march the soldiers are 
prompt and attentive, but, at the end of a certain number of hours, atten- 
tion decreases little by little; it is then difficult to maintain order: the 
men stumble against obstacles, walk at hazard, fall into ditches. If they 
are forced to still greater exertion they advance unevenly, without seeing 
anything, indifferent even to danger. Attention is gradually dissipated 
until quite lost. 

The workman is at first cautious and attentive: he avoids danger 
because his attention is alert: as sensibility decreases with the onset of 
fatigue his attention diminishes; he does not see danger. Accidents of 
labor, unhappily called "accidental," are more numerous with men sub- 
jected to exhausting labors, precisely for the same reason that they are 
more frequent in the later part of the working hours. "The number of 
accidents," says the Imperial German Insurance Office, "increase with 
extraordinary rapidity in proportion as the fatigue and weariness of the 
workmen insensibly increase." (Page 1031.) 

It is then a fixed fact that fatigue blunts sensibility little by little, and 
destroys attention. (Page 1032.) 

"With fatigued subjects," says Fere, "the eyelids relax, the convergence 
of the eyes becomes difficult, the position of the eyes lack steadiness, the 
gaze is vague and appears to be fixed on vacant space. Convergence 
being one of the conditions necessary for concentration of the attention, 
the defect here coincides with incapacity for mental work." (Page 
1032.) 

The fact that fatigue destroys attention was brought out a century 
ago by A. Crichton. 

Now, the faculty of attention, as Darwin has so admirably shown, is 
the most important of all faculties for the development of human intelli- 
gence. ("Descent of Man," Vol. I, page 44.) (Page 1033.) 

Excess of muscular labor, by suppressing attention, prevents the de- 
velopment of intelligence. (Page 1033.) 

Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin. 1896. 
Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A,, and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician, Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, 1904. 

In 1850, Hermann V. Helmholtz made out exactly the rapidity with 
which the mandates of the brain are sent along the nerves to the muscles, 
and measured the velocity with which impressions made on the surface 



FATIGUE OF ATTENTION 21 5 

of the body reach the brain. Everyone has noticed that scarcely do we italy 
feel ourselves pricked before we instinctively withdraw our hand. 

Helmholtz measured the time which elapses (1) between a prick and 
the perception of the pain; (2) between the perception of the pain and 
the muscular contraction in response. He found that in man the nerve 
current passes along the motor nerves with a velocity of 30 metres per 
second. The rapidity with which stimuli are propagated along the sensory 
nerves, which conduct impressions from the periphery of the body to the 
nervous centres is very similar. Some writers have found that the rate of 
propagation along the nerves may be as slow as 20 metres per second. 
(Pages 74-75.) 

Physiologists, especially the pupils of Wundt, have extended to all 
the senses their investigations of the phenomena of attention. One of 
the most singular facts — one of which we have all had practical demon- 
stration when fencing or playing at ball or at any game of skill — is that 
attention increases the promptitude of reaction; when we are off our guard 
we require a longer time to get into the proper position and hit back. 

. . . The difference is not in the rapidity of the movement, but in that 
of the psychic processes. The time of physiological reaction, or simply 
physiological time, is the name given to the interval between the occur- 
rence of an electric spark, for instance, and our giving some sign of having 
perceived it, say, by touching an electric button on which our hand rests. 
This short space of time varies in different individuals, and represents the 
delay which takes place before we take account of one of the most simple 
forms of perception. Great individual differences are found in this as 
well as in the more complex forms of perception. . . . Fatigue has a great 
influence on the duration of this reaction time. When such measurements 
are repeated without an interval for rest, the time before the response is 
given gradually increases. 

Most people take about 134 thousandths of a second before responding 
with the hand to a touch on the foot; but fatigue of the attention may 
prolong the interval to 200 or 250 thousandths of a second. 

Obersteiner showed that noises and all causes which tend to distract 
the attention lengthen the time of physiological reaction. One example 
will suffice to show how much better our brain functions in silence. Ober- 
steiner had an organ placed in the room where, by means of Hipp's chro- 
nometer, he was measuring reaction time. When there was silence, the 
subject of the experiment took 100 thousandths of a second before with 
his right hand he gave a sign of having felt a touch on his left; but when 
the organ was played, the time was prolonged to 140 or even 144 thou- 
sandths of a second. This retardation took place in spite of the greater 



2l6 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

intensity of the attention, and whenever the music ceased, the time of 
physiological reaction became as before. (Pages 203-205.) 

In weak and nervous people, especially in women, a very prolonged 
strain on the attention may give rise to serious ailments. (Page 188.) 

If the brain is fatigued, it is almost impossible to be attentive. (Page 
198.) 

The best example of the incapacity for attention produced by muscular 
fatigue is given by Alpine ascents. Only with great difficulty could Saussure 
do a little intellectual work on Mt. Blanc. "When I wished to fix my 
attention for a few consecutive moments, I had to stop and take breath 
for two or three moments." 

In my own case I have observed that great muscular fatigue takes 
away all power of attention and weakens the memory. I have made 
several ascents. I have been once on the summit of Monte Viso and 
twice on that of Monte Rosa, yet I do not remember anything of what I 
saw from those summits. My recollection of the incidents of the ascents 
becomes more and more dim in proportion to the height attained. It 
seems that the physical conditions of thought and memory become less 
favorable as the blood is poisoned by the products of fatigue, and the 
energy of the nervous system consumed. . . . Several Alpinists whom I 
consulted agreed with me that the last part of an ascent was least dis- 
tinctly remembered. (Page 200.) 

Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Vol. V, 
Sec. IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on, par des methodes physiologiques, 
etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans les diver ses professions? 
Quels sont les arguments que les sciences physiologiques et medicales 
peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir enfaveur de tel ou tel mode d' organisa- 
tion du travail? [To what extent may fatigue resulting from occupation 
he estimated by physiological methods, and what argument can medical 
and physiological science present that will influence favorably certain 
methods of industrial organiiation?] Dr. Zaccaria Treves, Uni- 
versity of Turin. Brussels, 1903. 

The examination of psychic functions in individuals profoundly fa- 
tigued by walking shows that preceding fatigue makes the subject more 
susceptible to subsequent fatigue, and that physical ailments or insuf- 
ficient sleep have the same effect. 

After fatigue a delay in promptness of reaction and a greater number 
of faults of memory and attention are noticeable, whilst moderate work 
has a favorable influence upon these functions. (Page 27.) 



FATIGUE OF ATTENTION 2^] 

The Psychology of Attention {authorised translation). Th. Ribot, Pro- France 
fessor of Comparative and Experimental Psychology in The College 
de France. Chicago, Open Court, 1894. 

Under the general head of exhaustion we include a very numerous group 
of states in which attention cannot pass beyond a very weak stage. . . . 

Examples are found in . . . extreme physical or mental fatigue. . . . 
In exhaustion it is impossible or extremely difficult to fix the attention. 
(Page 97.) 



La Fatigue et V Entratnement Physique. [Fatigue and Physical Training.] 
Dr. Phil. Tissie. Paris, Alcan, 1897. 

Attention exhausts a weak brain and puts it in a state of the least re- 
sistance, exactly as an illness would do. (Page 125.) 

Binet and Courtier established by observation of the capillary pulse, 
noted by a delicate instrument, that the mental effort required for fixed 
attention excited a vaso-constrictor reflex with acceleration of the heart, 
and of respiration, often vaso-motor irregularity or fluttering at this 
phase of excitation; then came a stage of depression, with slowed pulse 
and respiration, and a general weakening of dicrotism of the capillary 
pulsation, which is, they state, a symptom of fatigue. (Page 125.) 

The power of attention is variable with individuals: it is proportioned 
to the physical development and age; it is rudimentary with degenerates 
, . . and weak persons; it is little developed in children. (Page 125.) 

Every impression is a memory in formation or which may be evoked 
when once formed; now, childhood is spent in accumulating memories 
for all the rest of life, and, as there are few impressions which do not cause 
muscular functioning, it follows that the more numerous the impressions, 
so are the motions more numerous, and, vice versa, the more numerous the 
movements are, so are the impressions and the stores of memory more 
numerous. This is one of the reasons for the physical activity of child- 
hood, which seeks to adapt itself to its environment by the intermediary 
of its sensory organs. (Page 127.) 

Attention exhausts the psycho-dynamic forces necessary for motion, 
and, conversely, motion attenuates or suppresses attention. (Pages 
127-128.) 

The power of attention is limited and intermittent because each fixa- 
tion of attention is accompanied by a sensation of effort. (Pages 130- 
131.) 



2l8 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE Etude sur V Influence de la Duree du Travail Quotidien sur la Sante Generate 

de VAdulte. [Study of the Effect of the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults.] Ilia Sachnine, 1900. 

Attention is always accompanied by a sensation of effort, and fatigue 
resulting from attention is in direct proportion to the continuance of the 
effort and the difficulty of sustaining it. If one attempts to fix his atten- 
tion unwaveringly upon one object, he is soon conscious that the object is 
less keenly realized, then becomes clearer; in a word, attentiveness has a 
kind of rhythm; it oscillates. (Page 135.) 

Every one knows by experience that if attention or mental work be 
prolonged beyond measure there results a sort of mental cloudiness which 
tends to become more and more severe and may be accompanied by ver- 
tigo. The mental activity diminishes; under fatigue, attention and 
memory are weakened, the association of ideas becomes difficult and dis- 
traction augments. (Page 138.) 



Travail et Plaisir. [Work and Enjoyment.] Charles Fere, Doctor of 
Medicine. Paris, Alcan, 1904. 

Fatigue, which is shown in lessened energy of voluntary motions and 
also in their slackening and loss of precision, brings also a diminution of 
muscular tonicity. There is a fatigue of tone (Tonus) . The cramps which 
often coincide with other signs of motor weakness may be considered as 
due to a sort of ataxy of tone. This means, in other words, that the physi- 
cal conditions of attention are profoundly altered; involuntary attention 
is diminished as well as voluntary attention. (Pages 446-447.) 

Defect of attention hinders receptivity. At the same time memory 
undergoes a rapid disintegration. Depression of attention and of mem- 
ory is evinced in practical life by mistakes, errors, troubles of association, 
etc. (Page 447.) 



BELGIUM Thirteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Brussels, 

1903. Vol. V , Sec. IV. Dans quelle mesure peut-on par des methodes 
physiologiques, etudier la fatigue, ses modalites et ses degres dans les 
diverses professions? Quels sont les arguments que les sciences physio- 
logiques et medicates peuvent ou pourraient faire valoir en faveur de tet 
ou tel mode d' organisation du travail? [To what extent may fatigue 
resulting from occupation he estimated by physiological methods, and 
what arguments can medical and physiological science present in favor 



FATIGUE OF ATTENTION 219 

of Special methods of industrial organisation?] Dr. Jean de Moor, BELGIUM 
University of Brussels. Brussels, 1903. 

An excess of physical labor extends its depressing influence to all 
nervous functions. It diminishes the precision of movements and the 
exactness of their rhythm, and promotes trembling. It diminishes cu- 
taneous sensibility and blunts all the psychic activities. (Page 9.) 

Labor always involves to a certain degree the intervention of the higher 
mental activities; more and more, in our era, the share of mental work 
grows in every department. It is thus certain that in many occupations 
men exhaust not only the muscles employed but also the functions of 
attention and association which are incessantly brought into action. 
(Page 9.) 

Uher die Ursachen der Neurasthenie und Hysteric bei Arheitern. [The Germany 
Causes of Neurasthenia and Hysteria among Working People.] Paul 
ScHONHALS. A Study of 200 Cases in the IVorkingman s Sanitarium 
at Shonow Zehlendorf. Berlin, 1906. 

In the development of nervous disorders, overstrain of the faculty of 
attention, which is concentrated on the work, is of the most decisive in- 
fluence. (Page 27.) 

Mediiinische Klinik. Bd. 3^, Nr. 30, 1907. Die Ermildung des Ner- AUSTRIA 
vensystems und der Muskeln. [Nervous and Muscular Fatigue.] 
Dr. Jeno Kollarits, Professor of Neurology, Buda-Pesth. Berlin, 
1907. 

. . . Fatigue, like a shadow, attends every manifestation of life, . . . 
stimulation modifies tissue change and promotes disassimilation. There- 
upon should follow a process of active assimilation. (Page 893.) 

Symptoms of fatigue are caused by the progress of disassimilation as 
it takes place in the living and working tissues. If the organism, as a 
whole, is incapable, even with the help of accelerated heart action and 
deep rapid respirations of replacing the loss to tissues through consump- 
tion of their material, then we speak of exhaustion. 

Fatigue of the nervous system embraces mental fatigue, or weariness 
from thought, — fatigue of motion, and fatigue of feeling or sensation. 
Every one knows that continuous thought is fatiguing. No one can read 
indefinitely — sooner or later the mind refuses to follow the words. A com- 
plete restoration from such fatigue is only to be attained by a complete 
release from work. 



220 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



AUSTRIA It is important to know how long one cell or cell group of the brain may 

remain active in mental work . . . (experiments described of calling 
faces of acquaintances before mental vision, etc.). It is probable that 
disturbance of attention is nothing else than the speedy wearying of the 
brain cells that are called directly into action; to be sure the heightened 
irritability of the nervous system under the stimulus of attention also 
comes into play. (Page 894.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



The Mental Symptoms of Fatigue. Reprinted from the Transactions of 
the New York State Medical Association. Edward Cowles, M.D., 
Medical Superintendent of the McLean Hospital, Somerville, Mass. 
New York, Fless and Ridge, 1893. 

Every exercise of the will in attention is accompanied by the expenditure 
of energy, and by the "sense of effort" that occurs, particularly when 
attention works against some resisting motive, interest, or feeling. This 
directing and inhibitory control is at its best in the equilibrium of health 
of mind and body, and therefore it is a most important means of esti- 
mating mental health and vigor; mental disorder is commonly attended 
with disturbances of the normal process of attention. (Page 13.) 

Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Instruction. The 
Relation of Fatigue to Social and Educational Progress. Henry. S. 
Baker, Ph.D. Boston, 1895. 

The grand law of fatigue, as related to the mind, is that the highest 
faculties are the first to weaken from general fatigue, and become dull, 
inactive, or useless. (Page 38.) 

Continued attention to one subject cannot be given by a tired person 
for, being a higher faculty, it tires among the first. (Page 38.) 

The will is one of the first things to feel the effect of general fatigue. 
A tired man is lazy, physically and mentally. His higher brain cells 
have "struck," as it were for a holiday, and more brain food and time to 
eat it, so to speak. (Page 39.) 



E. Bad Effect of Fatigue upon Morals 

The dangers attendant upon excessive working hours 
are shown also by the moral degeneration which results 
from over-fatigue. Laxity of moral fiber follows physical 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 221 

debility. When the working day is so long that no time 
is left for a minimum of leisure and recreation, relief from 
the strain of work is often sought in alcoholic stimulants. 
In extreme cases the moral breakdown leads to mental 
degeneracy and criminal acts. 



(1) General Loss of Moral Restraints 
British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1842. Reports of Inspectors of great 



Factories. 

There can be little doubt that working 10 hours a day would be more 
favourable to health and the enjoyment of life than 12 hours a day can 
be; but without entering into the question of health, no one will hesitate, 
I think, to admit that, in a moral point of view, so entire an absorption of 
the time of the working classes . . . must be extremely prejudicial, and 
is an evil greatly to be deplored. Some there are, undoubtedly, who, by 
more than ordinary natural energy, overcome this disadvantage; but 
with the great mass it has the effect of rendering them ignorant, prejudiced, 
addicted to coarse sensual indulgences, and susceptible of being led into 
mischief and violence by any appeal to their passions or prejudices. With 
so few opportunities of mental culture, and of moral and religious training, 
it is surprising that there should be so many virtuous and respectable 
people among them. For the sake, therefore, of public morals, of bringing 
up an orderly population, and of giving the great body of the people a 
reasonable enjoyment of life, it is much to be desired that in all trades some 
portion of every working day should be reserved for rest and leisure. 
(Page 30.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

Witness, Sir W. MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons: 

2466. ... I have a strong opinion that moral and physical well-being 
depend largely one upon the other, and that if from any cause the physical 
condition of men and women is lowered the moral nature must to some 
extent suffer too. ... I quite agree with the opinions of my predecessors 
that such long hours are very grievous, and are calculated to do the com- 
munity in which they largely prevail serious harm. (Page 120.) 



BRITAIN 



222 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



The Case for the Factory Acts. 
Richards, 1901. 



Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 



If working long and irregular hours, accepting a bare subsistence wage, 
and enduring insanitary conditions tended to increase women's physical 
strength and industrial skill — if these conditions of unregulated industry 
even left unimpaired the woman's natural stock of strength and skill — 
we might regard factory legislation as irrelevant. But as a matter of 
fact a whole century of evidence proves exactly the contrary. To leave 
women's labour unregulated by law means inevitably to leave it exposed 
to terribly deteriorating influences. The woman's lack of skill and lack 
of strength is made worse by lack of regulation. And there is still a 
further deterioration. Any one who has read the evidence given in the 
various inquiries into the Sweating System will have been struck by the 
invariable coincidence of a low standard of regularity, sobriety, and mo- 
rality, with the conditions to which women, under free competition, are 
exposed. (Pages 209-210.) 

Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on 
the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

The cheerless days, too, spent in a textile factory amid the din of ma- 
chinery, and the monotonous character of the work, are not such as of 
themselves to quicken the intellect and promote the higher interests of 
life. Is it not rather that they tend, through the strain they cause, to 
encourage a craving for that form of recreation which seeks an outlet in 
excitement and pleasure, and, on the other hand, to dishearten men and 
women, who, as factory operatives, feel that they cannot rise to a higher 
occupation than that of minding machinery? The despotism of some 
branches of modern labour is overpowering. Factory legislation has done 
something to minimize this. ... To be of helpful service factory legisla- 
tion must be progressive and keep pace with the industrial problems special 
to each succeeding age. (Page xii.) 



ITALY 



Revue Internationale de Sociologie. Nov., 1895. Le Travail Humain et 
ses Lois. [The Laws of Human JVork.] Francesco S. Nitti, 
Professor, University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1895. 

A fact of no less importance affirmed by physicians everywhere and 
which explains why people subjected to long hours of work are often very 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 223 

excitable without displaying real resistance in industrial struggles, is ITALY 
that fatigue causes in individuals and races subjected to it, an irritable 
weakness, an excessive excitation, and almost always a feeble will. (Page 
1038.) 

Fatigue. A. Mosso, Professor of Physiology, University of Turin, 1896. 
Translated by Margaret Drummond, M.A., and W. B. Drummond, 
M.B., Extra Physician Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Edinburgh. 
New York, Putnam, 1904. 

Extreme fatigue, whether intellectual or muscular, produces a change 
in our temper, causing us to become more irritable; it seems to consume 
our noblest qualities — those which distinguish the brain of civilized from 
that of savage man. When we are fatigued we can no longer govern our- 
selves, and our passions attain to such violence that we can no longer 
master them by reason. 

Education, which is wont to curb our reflex movements, slackens the 
reins, and we seem to sink several degrees in the social hierarchy. We 
lose the ability to bear intellectual work, the curiosity, and the power of 
attention, which are the most important distinguishing characteristics 
of the superior races of man. (Page 238.) 

Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases. 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquenia in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to certain 
Forms of Labor.] Prof. Crisafulli. 

Every overfatigued worker is subject to a kind of poisoning derived 
not alone from the insalubrity of his place of work and surrounding con- 
ditions, but also from exhaustion. 

The symptoms of this abnormal condition are always more apparent 
in the last hours of the working day. Muscular weariness produces 
cerebral weariness. In a word, it is exhaustion which is often followed by 
nervous overexcitability, by hypersensitiveness, melancholy, sullenness, 
etc., all of which urge the individual to impulsive and conscienceless acts. 
From this to crime is but a step. (Page 149.) 

Muscular work influences the nervous system, for good or ill. The 
brain is profoundly affected by muscular overfatigue. The excessive 
weariness and lassitude of the overworked man can no longer be consid- 
ered the immediate result of his work, by rather the index of anomalies 
in metabolism from which auto-poisoning inevitably results. Prof. 
Mosso found that the brains of carrier pigeons, after a flight of 500 kilos. 



224 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



ITALY were pale and anasmic; likewise the brains of quails, which, flying from 

the African coast, fell exhausted upon our shores. (Page 150.) 

It is true that among malefactors there are many who, wearied and 
tormented by overwork and exhaustion suffer persistent changes of the 
organic metabolism to the detriment of the inhibitory centres, numbing 
the conscience, enfeebling moral and discriminatory powers, with irre- 
sponsible resultant actions often positively instinctive. 

It is an established fact that overfatigued workingmen, through the 
actual poisoning of fatigue, become unsettled in their mental equilibrium, 
remaining almost paretics in mental associations and discriminations, in 
the inhibitory powers and in the sentiments. (Page 157.) 



FRANCE 



GERMANY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Travail et Plaisir. [fVork and Enjoyment.] Charles Fere, Doctor of 
Medicine. Paris, Alcan, 1904. 

It is said that laziness is the mother of all vices, but fatigue is no less 
fertile; it increases desires and lessens self-control. (Page 451.) 

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. 1896. [Official Information from Reports of the {German) 
Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, 1897. 

Inspector for Baden: 

Then, too, physical overexhaustion cannot promote morality, for with 
lowered bodily resistance goes enfeeblement of will power. (Page 251.) 

Massachusetts House Document. No. 98. 1866. 

Overwork is the fruitful source of innumerable evils. Ten and eleven 
hours daily of hard labor are more than the human system can bear, save 
in a few exceptional cases. ... It cripples the body, ruins health, short- 
ens life. It stunts the mind, gives no time for culture, no opportunity for 
reading, study, or mental improvement. It leaves the system jaded and 
worn, with no ability to study. ... It tends to dissipation in various 
forms. The exhausted system craves stimulants. This opens the door 
to other indulgences, from which flow not only the degeneracy of individ- 
uals, but the degeneracy of the race. (Page 24.) 



Massachusetts House Document. No. 
Commission on the Hours of Labor. 



44. 1867. Report of Special 



It is certain that men may labor so severely and incessantly as in the 
long run to impair the vital energies, and thus reduce the powers of pro- 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 225 

duction; and it may be further true that too great amount of toil may not united 
only injure the physical powers, but depress or impair the mental faculties, ^^^ ^ 
so that in this way the productive capacity of a people may be greatly 
lessened. And, still further, not only the physical and mental but the 
moral nature of man may be imbruted by severe and unreasonably pro- 
tracted toil. 

The hours devoted to labor should not be so extended as not to leave 
sufficient time and strength to engage in those pursuits which will qualify 
the laborer for the discharge of his duties to himself, his family, and his 
government. (Pages 22-23.) 

Evidence Submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- 
ment of a Ten-Hour Law. Lawrence, 1870. 

After many years of careful observation, I think I can say, with truth, 
that the results of the eleven-hour system are evil, and only evil, physi- 
cally, intellectually, and morally. 

Overtasking all the powers of men, women, and children; pressing 
them in all their labors, and long, weary, exhausting hours of toil to a 
mere subsistence. . . . Any system of labor which thus tramples upon and 
treats with contempt man's higher nature, requiring of the father, mother, 
and children a constant battle to secure a bare living, leaves no time to 
cultivate the intellectual or moral nature; every energy of mind and body 
is crushed. Crime treads on the heels of crime as a natural result, driving 
multitudes to the intoxicating cup with all the attendant miseries. I. 
Duncan. (Pages 13-14.) 

Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1870-1871. 

Reduced hours of labor have a great tendency to improve one morally, 
mentally, and physically — a person will, under continual long hours, either 
succumb from want of physical power, or become a mere brute, not having 
time to think, visit, or do anything that would tend to personal improve- 
ment. Under such circumstances, it is nothing but work and sleep, if 
there is a family to support. (Page 591.) 

Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. 1892. 

Employers should realize that long hours at a severe tension are a 
cause of irritation among their employees, and they become ripe for almost 
any trouble, and trifles are often sufficient to precipitate violent strikes. 
The real cause of many of these strikes is overwork. (Page 12.) 



226 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of New York State Factory Inspector. 1899. 

STATES 

Long hours of hard manual labor destroy the mental appetite in almost 
every instance. 

The man is unfitted for reading or study — he is physically tired— 
and his intellect is inactive. The drain upon his vitality has been con- 
tinuous and heavy, and he must needs sleep in order to recuperate. This 
continues indefinitely — each succeeding day being but a repetition of the 
former. (Pages 16-17.) 



Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. 

Girls in factories are expected to keep up a certain "pace" while at 
work, and ten hours of driving work at a hot pace are not to be considered 
conducive to good health physically or to leave the worker in any humor 
for applying herself to educational improvement. Dances and shows will 
be the most attractive things to be indulged in after work, if the chance 
offer. (Pages 33-34.) 



Sixty-fifth Annual Meeting of the American Institute of Instruction. The 
Relation of Fatigue to Social and Educational Progress. Henry S. 
Baker, Ph.D. Boston, 1895. 

Among the higher functions of certain brain tracts is that of inhibition. 
These tracts are called "inhibitory centres," and their function is like that 
of brakes on a wagon, or like the governor on an engine, or like that of a 
coachman who holds a tight rein when his spirited team is going down hill 
or along a crowded street. The effect of fatigue on these centres is seen 
very quickly in any prolonged effort. ... In general, self-control is 
lost, and the lower, the baser, and the more selfish faculties of our nature 
run riot. ... In short, the fatigued person is very sure to fly off on a 
tangent in one or more lines. In other words, his inhibitory centres 
have ceased to act, he has little self-control. Most crimes of all kinds are 
committed at night, when men are tired, ugly, and possessed of little 
judgment, comparatively, and less conscience. . . . The rested boy or 
man can resist temptation, but the tired one cannot. His will and con- 
science are both too weak. (Page 41.) 

The facts of fatigue settle scientifically and beyond appeal some social 
and religious questions. Dr. C. F. Hodge, of Clark University, proved 
that, while eight or ten hours of rest restored the tired nerve cells to a 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 227 

condition nearly normal, at least thirty or thirty-six hours is needed for an united 
absolutely complete recuperation. That means that a Sabbath, giving 
so long a rest, is a necessity, if man is to do his best work physically and 
intellectually or live at his best esthetically, morally and religiously. 
(Pages 51-52.) 

Women and the Trades. Elizabeth Beardsley Butler. The Pitts- 

burgh Survey. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, 
Charities Publication Committee, 1909. 

Dulled senses demand powerful stimuli; exhaustion of the vital forces 
leads to a desire for crude, for violent excitation. Little time is left for 
pleasure after a ten-hour day. In such circumstances, culture of hand 
or brain seems unattainable, and the sharing of our general heritage a 
remote dream. A consideration of even more immediate importance is 
that such circumstances impel undisciplined girls toward unsocial action, 
toward vicious or criminal behavior. Craving for excitement is the 
last symptom of a starved imagination. At this point, discrimination 
has become too great an effort; foresight and social judgment have 
become impossible. Any excitation, destructive or not, is acceptable, 
if only it be strong; the effect of it is to create a desire for stronger stim- 
ulation. Roller-skating rinks, dance halls, questionable cafes, may figure 
only temporarily in the worker's life, or by increasing the demand for 
excitement, may lead to sexual license. (Page 356.) 



(2) Growth of Intemperance 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of . . . the great 
Commissioners for inquiring into the Employment of Children in Fac- 
tories and . . . Reports by the Medical Commissioners. Dr. Hawkins 
{Lancashire district). 

Intemperance, debauchery, and improvidence are the chief blemishes 
on the character of the factory workpeople, and those evils may easily be 
traced to habits formed under the present system, and springing from it 
almost inevitably. ... On all sides it is admitted that indigestion, hy- 
pochondriasis, and languor affect this class of the population very widely. 
After twelve hours of monotonous labour and confinement, it is but too 
natural to seek for stimulants of one kind or another; but when we super- 
add the morbid states above alluded to, the transition to spirits is rapid 
and perpetual. (Page 4.) 



228 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIII. 1844. 

BRITAIN -^ 

Mr. Roberton, a distinguished surgeon at Manchester, says, in a 
published essay: 

I regard it as a misfortune for an operative to be obliged to labour for 
so long hours at an exhausting occupation, and often in an impure atmos- 
phere. I consider this circumstance as one of the chief causes of the 
astounding inebriety of our population. 

Many females state that the labour induces an intolerable thirst; 
they can drink, but not eat. (Page 1095.) 

Mr. V. Smith: 

. . . Overwork, with disproportionate wages, was often productive of 
immorality. The reason was obvious; overwork produces exhaustion 
and a craving for excitement, which led to immorality. . . . High wages 
paid for work very laborious were apt to make workmen dissipated. Over- 
exertion required corresponding periods of idleness. (Pages 1501-1502.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1877. Report of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending April 30, 1877. 

Overtime induces drinking; it will be found in all the occupations in 
which overtime is worked there is more or less drinking. In trades like 
brickmaking, where there is a considerable strain upon the muscles, there 
is on that account a tendency to think it necessary to replace the waste by 
exciting drink, and this is, of course, intensified when work is continued 
longer than the body can properly sustain. (Page 15.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1893. Royal Commission on 
Labour. Group C. 

Mr. George Mitchell, chemical workers of Glasgow, Imrie, and Ruther- 
glenn : 

21,250. And you are satisfied that that is an accurate statement that, 
year in and year out, 60 per cent of the men employed in the chemical 
works work seven days a week, 12 hours per day? — No. It is not the 
case that they do it, from the very fact that the physical strain is too 
great for them. 

For instance, as a general rule, they are paid every fortnight, and gen- 
erally on the Saturday on which the pay occurs, you will find, if you take 
a visit through the chemical works, that the furnaces are in a great number 
of cases out, for the simple reason that the men's exhaustion is so great 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 229 

that they generally get drunk immediately after getting their pay, and great 
consequently are unable to come to their work that afternoon. . . . Britain 

21,252. You say in consequence of the physical exhaustion entailed 
by their labour, that on the pay days the men generally get drunk? — 
Yes. (Pages.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1903. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

The result is disastrous, even from the point of view of the industry 
itself, which if properly organized would be capable of offering really 
desirable employment to skilled workers instead of being, as it too often 
is, the last resort of the idle and intemperate. ... I would add that too 
often the very intemperance is created by the conditions of employment, 
by the excessive overstrain of endurance. (Page 174.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXII. 1904. Report of the Inter- 
Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. Vols. I, II, III. 

Committee report: 

160. . . . The close connection between a craving for drink and bad 
housing, bad feeding, a polluted and depressing atmosphere, long hours 
of work in overheated and often ill-ventilated rooms, only relieved by the 
excitements of town life, is too self-evident to need demonstration. (Page 
30.) 

164. The tendency of the evidence was to show that drinking habits 
among the women of the working classes are certainly growing, with 
consequences extremely prejudicial to the care of the offspring, not to 
speak of the possibility of children being born permanently disabled. 
Factory labour is mentioned as a predisposing cause. (Page 31.) 

The Case of the Journeymen Bakers. Evils of Night-work and Long Hours 
of Work. William Augustus Guy, M.B., Fellow of the Royal 
College of Physicians, Professor of Forensic Medicine, King's College; 
Physician to King's College Hospital, etc. London, Renshaw, 1848. 

But we must look at night-work and overwork in another light. We 
must look at it, not merely as the cause of sickness and premature decay, 
but as an unwholesome influence, acting day by day directly upon the 
body and indirectly upon the mind. Bodily exhaustion is evidently un- 
favourable to the exercise of self-control. It produces a feverishness, a 



230 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



restlessness, an excited state of mind, which is very apt to lead to exces- 
sive indulgence in spirituous liquors. The mind cannot settle to anything 
even to sleep, and craves excitement and exciting amusements; and thus 
bad habits are formed, which grow upon a man until it becomes very 
difficult to throw them off. (Page 12.) 



GERMANY 



Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical 
Expert on the JVhite Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer 
Match Committees of the Home Office. London, Murray, 1902. 

It is frequently asserted that laundry women as a class are intemperate 
and rougher than most industrial workers. That they are peculiarly 
irregular in their habits it is impossible to deny; and the long hours, the 
discomfort and exhaustion due to constant standing in wet and heat, 
discourage the entrance into the trade of a better class of workers is cer- 
tain. . . . The prevalence of the drink habit among many of them, of 
which so much is said, is not difficult to account for: the heat of an at- 
mosphere often laden with particles of soda, ammonia, and other chemicals 
has a remarkably thirst-inducing effect; the work is for the most part 
exhausting, even apart from the conditions, and the pernicious habit of 
quenching the thirst, and stimulating an overtired physical condition, 
with beer. (Pages 671-672.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten und Berghehorden fUr das 
Jahr 1907. Bd. /. Preussen. [Reports of the (German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1907. Vol L Prussia.] Berlin, 1908. 

Wherever night shifts or excessively long hours are the rule, alcoholic 
stimulants are taken constantly as a means for keeping up the energies 
. . . it is then doubly harmful. (Page 1^^^.) 

A definite decrease in the consumption of alcoholic drinks is to be 
hoped for as a result of the slowly progressing movement for shorter hours, 
better economic conditions, etc. . . . because the physical strain will 
then be lessened, nutrition better, etc. (Page 1^^^.) 



Handhuch der Arheiterwohlfahrt. Bd. U. [Handbook of the General 
Welfare of the Working Classes. Vol. IL] Edited by Dr. Otto 
Dammer. Arheiterschuti. [Protection of Working People.] Dr. 
AscHER. Stuttgart, Enke, 1903. 

That the over-exhaustion of brain and nerves not only is frequent 
among employees in responsible posts, as on railroads, etc., but has also 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 23 1 

cost many innocent lives as well, is too well known to need referring to Germany 
here. Of no less importance is the indirect influence of working time on 
the worker. A rest so short that it actually only suffices for sleep de- 
grades man to a beast of burden, undermines family life, when such exists, 
demoralizes the individual, who is allowed only the possibility of satisfying 
sensual wants, drives the man to drink and the woman to prostitution. 
(Page 79.) 



VerwaltungshericM der Landes-Versicherungsanstalt Berlin, fur das Jahr 
1906. [Report of the State Invalidity and Old Age Insurance Depart- 
ment for Berlin for 1906.] Report of the Physician in Chief of the 
Beeliti Sanitarium. {Tuberculosis not included.) Berlin, Loewen- 
thal, 1907. 

It is self-evident that the organism of the workman, overstrained by 
claims which often force him beyond the limit of his natural capacity, 
has urgent need of abundant and suitable nourishment. (Page 62.) 
. . . That a body so ill-nourished must with time lose its capacity for 
work, is undeniable, and it is only too readily conceivable that its possessor 
first intermittently, and then regularly, resorts to stimulants to brace 
himself, either not knowing or not apprehending the greater injury that 
it will do him. (Page 63.) 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
1907 . Vol. II. Sec. II. Die Ursachen des Alkoholismus. [Causes 
of Alcoholism.] Dr. H. Vogt, Germany, Berlin, 1908. 

By far the most important factors in alcoholism are the power and 
effect of external conditions . . . the influence of the surroundings . . . 
dangers encountered in occupations; then, too, the repeated exertions 
required by work, often far exceeding, whether momentarily or continu- 
ously, the strength of the worker. (Page 376.) 

Among external factors encouraging alcoholism different kinds of 
working conditions present very special temptations, sometimes because 
of the intensity of strain involved in them, or it may be because they are 
repulsive to the worker and so call for a special effort. (Page 379.) 



Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 



232 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. Loen- 

ING, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of fVork.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

Often the overtaxed workman seeks to relieve this tension, to keep 
up by the stimulus of drink. The enhanced capacity temporarily gained 
by such means, especially by alcohol, which plays a fatal part, only sinks 
later, however, into a more pronounced fatigue. (Page 1216.) 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Berichte iiher die Fahrikinspektion im Jahr 1879. [Reports of the (Swiss) 
Factory Inspectors. 1879.] Berne, Stdmpflische Printing House, 
1880. 

Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Inspector of 1st District: 

One hears much complaint of the drunkenness . . . immorality of 
the workmen, but, surprisingly enough, only in those industrial regions 
where excessive hours of work are regularly the rule. An employer . . . 
whose men worked from early morning until far into the night did not 
seem to realize that this was the real reason for what he called their 
"laziness." For who can fail to perceive that a workman who is kept at 
crushingly hard work early and late must become tired out — must need 
artificial stimulants to keep him going? (Page 14.) 

It seems that, in general, the entire discussion of the normal workday 
has been confined too exclusively to the commercial standpoint and that 
an all-round examination of the subject on the basis of the suggestions 
here made is greatly to be desired. (Page 14.) 



FRANCE Debats et Documents Parlementaires, Chambre des Deputes, 23^ Mars, 1881. 

[Parliamentary Debates and Documents {French), Chamber of Deputies, 
Mar. 23, 1881.] Suite de la discussion des propositions de hi concern- 
ant la duree des heures de travail dans les usines et les manufactures. 
[Discussion of the sections of the law relating to the length of hours of 
work in workshops and factories.] 

Senator Waddington: 

As far back as 1848, General Castellane said, "The workers have no 
time to sleep. When one cannot sleep, one must keep up his strength by 
extra food. They cannot do that, so they have recourse to alcoholic 
drinks to produce a fictitious strength." (Page 616.) 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 



233 



Archives Generates de Medecine. Vol. I. 1906. La Journee de Huit FRANCE 
Heures. [The Eight-hour Day.] Dr. P. Corneille. Paris, 1906. 

Dr. Verhaeghe, in la Medecine Sociale, regards the long working day 
as an obvious cause of overstrain and sees in this overstrain the primary 
cause of alcoholism, tuberculosis, and physical degeneracy in all its forms. 

The same opinion is held by Dr. Gley of the Faculty of Medicine. 

Like Imbert, he sees in fatigue the chief causes of labor accidents, and, 
like Verhaeghe, he holds that excess of labor leads to alcoholism. (Page 
1199.) 

Proceedings of the 1st International Convention on Industrial Diseases. ITALY 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquenia in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to certain 
Forms of Labor.] Prof. Crisafulli. 

In the bitter competition of the age, the organism of workmen quickly 
succumbs to fatigue; they must therefore be looked after with all due care 
to ward off the many incurable ailments that threaten the life of both 
manual and brain workers. 

... In many cases this poisoning produced by fatigue drives the 
working man to drink, by means of which he hopes to restore his exhausted 
energy. 

The consequences are, then, serious indeed, there being a double poison- 
ing at work, that of fatigue and that of alcohol. (Page 150.) 



Evidence Submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- 
ment of a Ten-Hour Law. Lawrence, 1870. 

G. S. Weaver, Pastor of Universalist Church, Lawrence: 
I beg leave to state, after ten years' observation in this community, 
that in my judgment our people are so overworked as to materially hinder 
their intellectual and spiritual improvement. Their excessive labor quite 
unfits them for serious thought and for seeking the advantages of Christian 
improvement. I seriously question whether their exhausted condition 
does not create a desire for stimulants, which is even a greater evil than 
overwork among our laboring people. Anything which legislators can do 
to preserve the physical force of our people and temperate habits will be 
work in the right direction, and nothing is clearer than that the mothers 
and children are the class specially needing legislative care. 

I could say much from observation on these two points, Overwork and 
Intemperance. (Pages 20-21.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



234 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1871. 

STATES r J J J 

Labor excessively protracted defeats its own end — the maximum of 
production — by the exhaustion and sickness engendered, and by the 
drunkenness, dissipation, and idleness of which it is the efficient cause. 

The evils resulting from the excessive labor of factory men, women, 
and children, especially the latter two classes, produce marked results of 
a detrimental nature. (Page 573.) 

Massachusetts Senate Documents, No. 33. 1874. 

The Committee on the Labor Question to whom was referred so much 
of the Governor's address as relates to Labor Reform, having considered 
so much thereof as pertains to the enactment of a ten-hour law, and having 
also considered the petition of Wendell Phillips and others for the passage 
of such a law, report: . . . that working eleven and twelve hours a day 
in these factories saps the energies and produces a depression of spirits 
that finds relief only in the indulgence of intoxicants. (Page \.) 

Relations between Labor and Capital. United States Senate Committee 
on Education and Labor. Vol. 1. 1883. Govt Printing Office, 1885. 
Testimony of Robert Howard, Mule-spinner in Fall River Cotton 
Mills. 

1 have noticed that the hard, slavish overwork is driving those girls 
into the saloons, after they leave the mills evenings . . . good, respect- 
able girls, but they come out so tired and so thirsty and so exhausted . . . 
from working along steadily from hour to hour and breathing the noxious 
effluvia from the grease and other ingredients used in the mill. (Page 
647.) 

Wherever you go . . . near the abodes of people who are overworked, 
you will always find the sign of the rum-shop. 

Drinking is most prevalent among working-people where the hours of 
labor are long. (Page 649.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

Excessive work and long hours are the causes that have powerfully 
promoted the use of stimulants and intoxicating liquors. The harmful 
influence of a long working day acts not only directly upon those who 
work, but also upon future generations and threatens the vigor and full 
development of the human race. (Page 66.) 



BAD EFFECT OF FATIGUE UPON MORALS 235 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Annual Convention of the International Associa- united 
tion of Factory Inspectors of America. Indianapolis, 1900. Niagara STATES 
Falls, 1901. {Bound in New York Department of Labor Report, 1901.) 
The Shorter IVorkday in its Effect upon the Personal Character of the 
Worker. John Holbrook, Deputy Commissioner of Labor, Michigan. 

There is such a thing as the moralization of time in reference to its 
effects upon personal character. The worker who formerly toiled long 
hours from morning till night and six days in the week, left idle on the 
seventh day, was under great temptation to make a brute of himself on 
that day. Too tired to do anything, jaded body, starved brain, brutalized 
soul, there could be no Sunday rest for such; there was nothing left to do 
but get drunk as the natural result of a tired and brutalized body and soul. 

More leisure has given opportunities for thought and the growth of 
intelligence which eager minds have not been slow to improve; the news- 
paper, work of science, and a quiet Sunday in which more than a small 
minority attend worship, have been wonderfully helpful and elevating. 

Under the old order of things no man could avail himself of Sunday 
rest and worship. He was too tired and too weary to enjoy them, even 
if he had the capacity, which was very doubtful; nor was he fitted for 
home life and its duties, and consequently missed its moralizing effects. 
(Pages 564-565.) 

Industrial Conference under the Auspices of the National Civic Federation, 
New York, 1902. The Eight-hour Day. Prof. George G union. 
Institute of Social Economics. The JVinthrop Press, New York, 1903. 

So long as the laborer works to the point of being exhausted, so far is 
the possibility of this educational opportunity destroyed. To work in 
the factory till exhausted disqualifies a laborer for reading a book, for 
instance, and for enjoying the social influences of family and friends. It 
fits him for the saloon, it fits him for the need of stimulants; he comes to 
the point where he wants the quickest relief, and, unfortunately, that is 
too frequently the saloon. (Page 173.) 

American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. XXVII, No. 3. 
1906. Philadelphia. The Manhood Tribute to the Modern Machine: 
Influences Determining the Length of the Trade Life among Machinists. 

James O'Connell, President International Association of Machinists: 

In searching for something to brace up his nerves the worker has no 

idea he is taking great risks, or running any danger of becoming a victim 



236 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED to the drug habit. Unfortunately, it often happens that he strikes some- 

STATES thing which for the time seems to renew the health and vigor of the years 

gone by, but the relief is only temporary. He must repeat and increase 
the dose, and before he knows it — he perhaps never realizes it — he be- 
comes the slave of some derivative of coal tar, alkaloid or alcohol. (Page 
494.) 

The Steel JVorkers. John A. Fitch. The Pittsburg Survey. Russell 
Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publication Com- 
mittee, 1910. 

The dust of the mills, too, that the men have been breathing for twelve 
hours, sends another quota to their beer or whiskey to clear out their 
throats. Then comes the largest contingent of all, the men wearied with 
the heat and the work, some almost overcome and dragging their feet. 
These feel the necessity of a stimulant, and they get it day after day, 
regardless of the waste of physical and nervous energy involved in keeping 
themselves keyed up to their work by an artificial aid. I do not think I am 
far wrong when I say that a large majority of steel workers sincerely 
believe that the regular use of alcoholic drinks is essential to keep them 
from breaking down. (Page 227.) 

The better class of steel workers, who view their fellows with a sym- 
pathetic eye, explain the holiday intoxication of a certain element in the 
industry as a logical result of steady work and the long day. After weeks 
and months of work, twelve hours a day, and no holidays, a man gets far 
behind in his accumulation of the pleasure that he feels to be his due. 
(Page 228.) 



F. Bad Effect of Long Hours on General Welfare 
(1) State's Need of Preserving Health 

The experience of manufacturing countries has illus- 
trated the evil effect of overwork upon the general wel- 
fare. Health is the foundation of the state. No nation 
can progress if its workers are crippled by continuous over- 
exertion. The loss of human energy, due to excessive work- 
ing hours, is a national loss, and must inevitably result in 
lowering the nation's prosperity. 



STATE S NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH 237 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIV. 1844. great 

BRITAIN 

Viscount Howick: 

I contend that you altogether misapply the maxim of leaving industry 
to itself when you use it as an argument against regulations of which the 
object is not to increase the productive power of the country, or to take 
the fruits of a man's labour from himself and give it to another, but, on 
the contrary, to guard the labourer himself and the community from evils 
against which the mere pursuit of wealth aflfords us no security. The mere 
increase of a nation's wealth is not the only — it ought not even to be the 
first and highest — object of a Government. The welfare, both moral and 
physical, of the great body of the people I conceive to be the true concern 
of the Government ... In the too eager pursuit of wealth, a nation, like 
an individual, may neglect what is of infinitely higher importance. (Page 
642.) 

Factory Act Legislation. The Cobden Pri^e Essay for 1891. Victorine 
Jeans. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. 

The bodily and intellectual energy of the individual workman is, after 
all, the only true basis of any kind of national greatness. . . . Long ex- 
perience teaches this: that no law which promotes the physical, intel- 
lectual, and moral good of the working classes can in the long run prove 
economically unsound. (Page 91.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

The question arises, however, whether on philanthropic grounds alone 
individuals of mature years can be denied the right to work as long and 
as unhealthily as they like. The Acts of 1891 and 1895 show signs of a 
recognition, if a tardy one, that the real grounds of interference with in- 
dustry are considerations of public health and safety. The old idea of 
protecting certain classes of workers because they are not "free agents" 
is more and more felt to be irrelevant, if not meaningless. There are still 
those who ask in astonishment, "May not a man, may not a woman, 
employ their capital or their labour as they choose?" But the State says, 
with a less and less hesitating sound, "Not under conditions wasteful of 
the life, or destructive of the efficiency, of those employed, or dangerous 
to the safety and well-being of the community." To this conclusion it 
has been driven by inquiry into the conditions of public health. (Page 
123.) 



238 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.\ Ed- 
ited by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und Fab- 
rikgesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legisla- 
tion.] Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

In no field have State and society greater duties to perform than in 
industrial hygiene and the prevention of accidents, and these duties 
become more serious as the difficulty and dangers of occupation increase. 

. . . And yet no one can deny that the present industrial labor of 
women and children betokens a misdirection of working strength which, 
by dint of premature and unnatural drains upon and exhaustion of labor 
capacity, is capable of inflicting moral and physical injury upon the fam- 
ily. Obviously also, the preservation and vigor of the family are the first 
essentials of all social reforms. . . . The protection of labor is not only 
a postulate of humanity and of morals, but above all else, of the national 
health. 

The aim and purpose of our work is to benefit the whole race, by bring- 
ing the egoistic desires of individuals into harmony with the purposes of a 
unified society. (Pages 1-3.) 

Die Pathologie und Therapie der Neurasthenie. [Pathology and Thera- 
peutics of Neurasthenia.] Dr. Otto Binswanger, Professor of Psy- 
chiatry and Director of the Psychiatric Hospital at Jena. Jena, 
Fischer, 1896. 

General prophylaxis will find its most pressing duty to lie in the pro- 
tection of those members of society who are still healthy, from immoderate 
demands upon their strength. As, on account of the competition in all 
classes of society, it is hardly possible to relax intensity of work for any 
one individual without destroying his chances for success, a general plan 
of hygienic regulation of work must be adopted with a view to the pres- 
ervation of racial vigor, and the working energy demanded shall be re- 
duced enough to allow rest and recreation in ample extent for every one. 
(Page 358.) 

Archiv fiir Unfallheilkunde, Gewerbehygiene und Gewerbekrankheiten. 
Bd. I. Uber den Gesundheitsschuti der Gewerblichen Arbeiter. [Pro- 
tection of the JVorkingman s Health.] Dr. Schaefer. Stuttgart, 
Enke, 1896. 

There is scarcely a single industrial occupation in which one or more of 
the above influences (results of excessive standing, sitting, etc.) is not 



STATE S NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH 239 

prominent. We include them therefore in the general dangers of occupa- Germany 
tion to which factory workers especially are exposed. (Page 202.) 

The claim for a shorter working day, which has been pressed in all 
civilized countries within the past few decades, and which may be defined 
as an absolute social need, can not be urgently enough supported in the 
interest of the public health. (Page 204.) 

Gesammelie Ahhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete fVorks. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Verkiiriung des Industriellen 
Arheitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society, Jena, 1901. 
Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

As the expenditure of power due to the machines running idle amounts 
to a useless consumption of 30-40 millions of marks of coal, wasted in 
Germany, so, even more important, is the waste of energy in the loss of 
efficiency of 3 or 4 million men. And the question then arises: What is 
the sense of this undoubted waste of strength, when it is possible for men 
to produce the same in the 8 hours that they do in 10? And whose loss 
is it? Is it only the loss of individual convenience to men who would find 
it more agreeable to spend only 8 hours at work, or is it a loss that has a 
general social and economic significance? I hold it is the latter. (Page 
236.) 

This squandering of human strength means a loss to the intelligence 
and mental activity of the human race; it means that a valuable capital 
which Germany possesses in the intelligence of her workers is lying idle, 
because the conditions are not such as to permit this intelligence to expand 
to its full value. (Page 237.) 

Gremifragen des N erven und Seelenlehens. Bd. VI. [Borderland Problems 
of Nervous and Psychic Life. Vol. VI.] Edited by Loewenfeld and 
KuRELLA. Uber die geistige Arbeitskraft und ihre Hygiene. [On 
Mental Working Power and its Hygiene.] Dr. L. Loewenfeld. 
Wiesbaden, Bergmann, 1906. 

The efficiency of the individual is a part of the national efficiency. 
If one considers how rushing and incessant the commercial rivalry of 
civilized states is to-day, and realizes how closely the results of this struggle 
depend upon the intellectual capital which the nations have at their com- 
mand, one is obliged to admit what a great significance for national wel- 
fare there is in the mental working capacity of the individual. But among 



240 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY those most concerned there has been, as yet, by no means adequate recog- 
nition of this fact. . . . We are still far from being able to say that all is 
done that can be done, by private initiative and by the state, to preserve 
and develop the brain power of the nation. (Page 68.) 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



H andworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. [The Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. /.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; 
W. Lexis, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

But there is one time when politico-economic doubts (as to the in- 
dustrial results of restriction) must take second place. Wherever the 
length of working hours is responsible for injury to health or morals, then 
the state is justified in interfering, even although the results from the 
economic point of view cannot be clearly determined. It conflicts with 
the moral sense of modern nations to permit the robbery of humait work- 
ing power and to allow men to be used simply as means of enriching other 
men. Such parasitic industries present no elements of strength, but only 
disease and weakness. (Page 1207.) 

Berichte der eidg. Fahrikinspektoren iiber ihre Amstdtigkeit in den Jahren 
1894 und 1895. [Reports of the (Swiss) Factory Inspectors. 1894 and 
1895.] Aarau, Sauerl'dnder, 1896. 

Among the social questions of the day the reduction of hours holds 
first rank. ... It cannot be denied that one who abuses his strength by 
excessive labor, loses his health and frequently becomes a worn-out and 
useless man before his time, often indeed a charge upon society. The 
interest of the workman and the interest of society are at one in demanding 
a just and rational limit of the hours of work. (Page 129.) 



ROUMANIA Proceedings of the Eleventh International Congress of Medicine, Rome, 
1895. Vol. I. Die Stellung des Staates {ur Modernen Bacteriolog- 
ischen Forschung [The Attitude of States to Modern Bacteriological 
Investigation.] Dr. V. Babes, University of Bucharest. Rome, 1895. 

There should be physicians specially trained, and free from the claims 
of general practice, who could make widely known in responsible circles 
and especially among statesmen, all the achievements of medical science 
and the lines of practical application on which their vast importance for 
the health of nations might be utilized. . . . 



STATE S NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH 



241 



Men so trained must then, before all, agitate strongly for a fundamental roumania 
reconstruction of society in the interest of an international and social 
reform based upon the following principles, namely: that individual 
health cannot be separated from the general health; that the health of 
one class is decided by that of another class; and that precisely the health 
of the lower classes possesses the highest socio-economical value of all. 
(Page 244.) 

Eighth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Budapest, AUSTRIA 
1894. Vol. VII. Sec. V. Cher das Verhaltniss der Dauer des 
Arheitstages lur Gesundheit des Arheiters und dessen Einfluss auf die 
Offentliche Gesundheit. [The Length of the Working Day in its Re- 
lation to the Workman's Health and Influence upon Public Health.] 
Dr. E. R. J. Krejcsi, Vice-Secretary of the Chamber of Commerce, 
Budapest. Budapest, 1896. 

One of the most important, most pressing questions is the regulation 
of working hours, and this question cannot be considered to be settled 
even in those states which have already established a "normal" working 
day. In the face of all the facts, of the dangers threatening the public 
health through overexertion arising from too long working hours, it be- 
comes the duty of States to give continuous attention to the claims made 
for a hygienic and therefore an allowable working time, and to lower the 
duration of working hours progressively, ... in accordance with the 
findings of authorized physiological and socio-economic investigations. 
The scruples which have been loudest heard in opposition are gradually 
being silenced, and experience will prove that the factory hand will be 
able to attain a higher efficiency by practice and training. We do not 
know, to-day, at what point in production, as gauged by the working time, 
a permanent inferiority of capacity comes on. It is possible that it may 
appear after a number of hours that would seem to us, with our present 
ideas, very small indeed. (Page 331.) 



Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Paris, 1900. FRANCE 
In one volume. Address of M. Waldeck Rousseau, President of the 
Council, Minister of the Interior, France. Paris, Masson, 1900. 

More and more do democracies realize that the laws of hygiene are an 
integral part of their programme. 

They are recognizing that the working classes — to whom the means of 
obeying the claims of private sanitation are too often lacking — have the 
right to demand a minimum guarantee from public hygiene; that laws 
16* 



242 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE are necessary to enforce this; that such laws are a debt of society toward 

its members. (Page 15.) 

Revue d'Economie Politique. T. XVI. 1902. La Protection Legale des 
Travailleurs, est-elle Necessaire? [Is Legal Protection for Working 
People Necessary?] M. Raoul Jay, Professor of Law, University of 
Paris. 

The strength of the nation is the strength of the individuals that com- 
. pose it. No one contests the terrible consequences that a nation must 
expect that subjects its children to labor which checks their physical and 
mental development, . . . But to safeguard the nation's interest it does 
not suffice merely to regulate child labor. "To protect the child and not 
to protect the mother is an absurdity." Said Jules Simon . . . What 
good is gained if — even supposing the child is protected — the strength of 
the adult is wrecked in a few years by excessive or unhealthy labor; — if 
the adult is not given the leisure necessary to develop his human quali- 
ties? . . . 

To secure the necessary "national minimum" is, for some countries, 
an imperative duty. I am thinking of the military service, where the 
strength of all is the guaranty of national independence. (Pages 148-149.) 

Revue d'Economie Politique. T. XV. 1901. La Nouvelle Reglemen- 
tation de la Journee de Travail. [The New Labor Legislation.] M. 
BouRGUiN, Professor of Political Economy, Lille. 

The whole movement of modern civilization tends in the direction of a 
progressive reduction of the hours of labor. . . . The future of the race 
must not be compromised, family life destroyed, the physical energy of 
the worker shattered, or his intellectual or moral development stunted by 
excessive toil. (Page 344.) 



BELGIUM 



Les Projets de Limitation de la Duree du Travail des Adidtes en Belgique. 
[Proposals regarding Limitation of Hours of IV ork for Adults in Belgium.] 
Hector Denis. No. X of the Publications of the Belgian Sectio7i of 
the International Association for Labor Legislation. Liege, Bernard, 
1908. 

In the debate, M. Dejace attributed a police power to the State by 
which it might properly intervene not only to restrain, but also to prevent 
abuses. As serious exploitation compromises not only the existence of the 
worker but also the verv future of the race, this, to his mind, was sufficient 



STATE S NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH 



243 



ground, and the only legitimate ground, for preventive intervention by BELGIUM. 
Government. (Page 18.) 

M. Denis held that state regulation is not only justified when the actual 
existence of the worker and of the race is threatened, but further that it is 
justifiable in securing the necessary conditions for the conservation and 
development of the laboring classes physically, intellectually, morally, 
socially, and politically. (Page 19.) 

Psychology furnishes a justification of restrictive law, in demonstrating 
the defectiveness and slow development of the consciousness of fatigue. 
The social consciousness, then, must supplement that of the individual. 
(Page 20.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1871. 

It is claimed that legislation on this subject is an interference between 
labor and capital. . . . But legislation has interfered with capital and 
labor both, in the demand for public safety and the public good. Now 
public safety and public good, the wealth of the Commonwealth, centred, 
as such wealth is, in the well-being of its common people, demands that 
the State should interfere by special act in favor of . . . working women, 
and working children, by enacting a ten-hour law, to be enforced by a 
system of efficient inspection. (Page 567.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health. 
VIS, M.D. 



1873. Edward Jar- 



All additions to the physical, moral, or intellectual power of individuals 
in any individual are, to that extent, additions to the energy and the pro- 
ductive force — the effectiveness of the State; and on the contrary, all 
deductions from these forces, whether of mind or body — every sickness, 
and injury or disability, every impairment of energy — take so much from 
the mental force, the safe administration of the body politic. . . . 

The State thus has an interest not only in the prosperity, but also in 
the health and strength and effective power of each one of its members. 
(Page 336.) 



National Convention of Factory Inspectors in the United States. Phila- 
delphia, June 8-9, 1887. Columbus, Myers, 1887. 

Rufus R. Wade, Chief Factory Inspector of Massachusetts: 
The history of what is called our Ten-hour Law was a record of con- 
stant, feverish struggle, maintained year after year, passed in one branch 



244 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED ^^ the Legislature and defeated in the other, and it was not until several 

STATES annual sessions had elapsed that the bill so earnestly and bitterly fought 

over became a law. It is well that such bills are enacted; it is well that 
the producers of wealth have been recognized. (Page 199.) 

... In our State the policy has been of conserving manhood. The 
eye, the hand, the brain of the worker are finer machines than any pro- 
duced by his labor and skill. So we think it is wiser to improve our people 
than to increase the productive capacity of our machinery. (Page 13.) 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1898. 

A shorter working day for these classes of laborers seems an imperative 
necessity if we would increase the true value of the State; for we believe 
that a nation, state or community, has but one value, and that is human 
life and happiness. Any system which depreciates or robs us of the wealth 
of the human is an injury to the best interests of the State. (Page 77.) 

Report of the IVisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. Pari 
III. 1907-1908. Industrial Hygiene and the Police Power; Being 
a Reprint of a Paper on the Legitimate Exercise of the Police Power for 
the Protection of Health, by Henry Baird Favill, M.D. 

In the industrial world, health is the foundation of productiveness and 
the bulwark of economy. That society and progress depend utterly upon 
these factors can hardly be questioned. It is hence only necessary to 
reach a conclusion as to the fundamental importance of health as related 
to the product of any individual or to have a comprehensive grasp of the 
elements of waste and dissipation in social affairs to at once put the ques- 
tion of public health as a thing apart to be dealt with as a social problem 
irrespective of its particular bearing upon any class of citizens. (Page 
480.) 

We must study the relation of health to labor. — It needs no argument 
to maintain that abundant data and well considered demonstration will 
be necessary to bring to pass this great reform. It is not the purpose of 
this discussion to go into the detail of the research leading to this end. 
It is agreed that labor legislation must have its foundation in clear eco- 
nomic advantage. It is perhaps not so well agreed, but the idea is rapidly 
growing, that of all the factors of an economic advantage, health is the 
most crucial. Upon this hypothesis, therefore, the conclusion may rest, 
that the logical primary step is the establishment of broad and effective 
study of health as related to laboring conditions. (Pages 485-486.) 



STATE S NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH 245 

American Academy of Political and Social Science. Vol. XXVII. No. 3, states 
1906. Philadelphia. Physical and Medical Aspects of Labor and 
Industry. Frederick L. Hoffmann, Statistician Prudential In- 
surance Company of America, Newark, N . J . 

The most valuable possessions of a workman are his health, strength, 
and intelligence. The conservation of health and strength, the pro- 
longation of life and prevention of disease, are important economic 
factors which more or less determine the success of nations in the struggle 
for commercial supremacy and race survival. A gain in longevity, an 
increase in vitality, a decrease in disease liability, are all economic ele- 
ments of the greatest possible economic importance. 

They lie at the root of the true problem, for they determine in the 
long run the real and enduring progress, prosperity and well-being of the 
masses. (Page 465.) 

The period of industrial activity of wage-earners generally, but chiefly 
of men employed in mechanical and manufacturing industries, it may be 
assumed, should properly commence with the age of fifteen and terminate 
at sixty-five. (Page 465.) 

. . . There is an economic value inherent in every year of a workman's 
life, and . . . every gain in human longevity above the age of fifteen and 
below the age of sixty-five represents a corresponding gain to the nation 
at large and a distinct contribution to the accumulated wealth and capital 
of the nation. (Page 466.) 

. . . If on the basis of an average net gain to society of 300 dollars 
per annum, the 50 active years of a working man's life represent a total 
of 15,000 dollars, then if death should occur at the age of 25, the economic 
loss to society would be 13,695 dollars; if at the age of 35, it would be 
10,593 dollars; if at the age of 50, 4495 dollars; and, finally, if at the age 
of 60, the loss would still be 1090 dollars. Of course, the values would 
vary considerably in different employments, but the broad principle is 
fairly well illustrated and with approximate accuracy in this calculation. 
(Page 467.) 

If this theory is applied to the problem of preventive medicine and 
vital statistics, some extremely suggestive conclusions result from a 
careful study of the facts. Out of every 1000 males living at the age 
of fifteen ... by the last English life table 464 will survive to the age 
of sixty-five, while 556 will have fallen out, or have died, in the mean- 
time, as the result of either accidents or disease. The present considera- 
tion takes into account only the 556 out of every 1000 who die between 
the age of fifteen and sixty-five from causes which, by modern standards 



246 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED of medicine and hygiene, are largely of a preventable nature. This 

STA ES theory is readily susceptible of statistical proof, but it needs merely to 

be pointed out that the mortality from some of the most important of 

these causes, such as consumption, typhoid fever, and industrial accidents, 

is more or less decreasing in all civilized countries. (Page 468.) 

... If the duration of life has, on the average, the considerable eco- 
nomic value referred to at the outset, then it manifestly must be to the 
advantage of the state and the employers of labor that nothing within 
reason be left undone to raise to the highest possible standard the level of 
national physique and of health and industrial efficiency. . . . The in- 
terests of the nation, of wage earners as a class, and of society as a whole, 
transcend the narrow and selfish interests of the short-sighted employers 
of labor who, disregarding the teachings of medical and other sciences, 
manage industry and permit the existence of conditions contrary to a 
sound industrial economy and a rational humanitarianism. There can 
be no question of doubt but that at the present time the average life and 
industrial efficiency of a workingman in the United States is not what it 
should be, and it is manifestly the duty of the State, of employers of labor, 
of labor associations, and of workingmen themselves to take the facts of 
the problem into consideration and by intelligent co-operation raise to 
the maximum the standard of life and health in American industry. 
(Page 484.) 

National Child Labor Committee. New York. Proceedings of the Fifth 
Annual Conference. Chicago, III., 1909. The Federal Children's 
Bureau. Henry B. Favill, M.D. Chicago, III. 

Absolute control of the health of the individual can never be the 
function of the State, Control of the conditions under which the lives 
of the people shall be lived and their energies expended is an inevitable 
necessity. The State will approach this problem from the standpoint of 
self-preservation. Defective health is the foundation of crime, pauper- 
ism, and degeneracy as well as that widespread inefficiency due to obvious 
disease. 

All sociologic forces have come to recognize this fact. The physical well- 
being of the people is the deepest interest of the State. (Pages 37-38.) 

(2) States' Need of Preserving Health of Women 

The health of the race is conditioned upon preserving the 
health of women, the future mothers of the Republic. 



BRITAIN 



NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH OF WOMEN 247 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors great 
of Factories for Half-year ending 30th April, 1869. 

The question of the cheapening of labor by the extended employment 
of women and children from home, is one of ever deepening interest in a 
country like ours. . . . Whatever affects the female character, its in- 
fluence on society, on her own life as well as on the conditions of life in 
her offspring, is being gradually encircled with contingencies, the result of 
which, to those who see them in their various phases, it is not possible to 
regard without considerable anxiety. . . . The time seems, indeed, to be 
fast approaching when the cheapness of production with a certain amount 
of excellence only is to be the trader's great highway to prosperity, and 
when whatever relates to social life is to succumb to the competition 
which is running to and fro upon it. (Page 75.) 



Problems of Poverty. John A. Hobson, M.A. London, Methuen, 1891. 

Surely, from the large standpoint of true national economy, no wiser 
use could be made of the vast expansion of the wealth-producing power 
of the nation under the reign of machinery, than to secure for every woman 
destined to be a wife and a mother, that relief from the physical strain of 
industrial toil which shall enable her to bring forth healthy offspring, and 
to employ her time and attention in their nurture. . . . (Page 168.) 



Women's IVork and Wages. Edward Cadbury, M. Cecile Matheson, 
and George Shann. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1906. 

The employer is responsible for the hours passed inside his place of 
business, and if the conditions are such that the average worker is checked 
in development, or is actually deteriorating, the employer is running into 
debt to the country. 

If he uses up human capital instead of the interest in energy, etc., which 
can be repaired daily by an average constitution, his business is aided 
either by the worker's relatives or by the rates which must provide for 
those who are prematurely disabled. Women especially fall off in ca- 
pacity in consequence of early overstrain, and this has a disastrous effect 
on their offspring; while many in middle life drag on a miserable existence 
on the diminished wages they are able to earn. In so much as this is due 
to work and not to home life, our labor conditions need reform, and em- 
ployers and the consuming public must be held jointly responsible. 
(Pages 198-199.) 



248 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



CANADA Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute respecting Hours of Employ- 

ment between the Bell Telephone Co. of Canada, Ltd., and Oper- 
ators at Toronto, Ont. The Department of Labor. Ottawa, Canada, 
1907. 

Conclusions and Recommendations: 

We believe that where it is a question between the money-making 
devices of a large corporation and the health of young girls and women, 
business cupidity should be compelled to make way. The evidence given 
before us, and the facts of experience, as cited, go to prove that this is a 
matter which cannot with safety be entrusted to the parties concerned, but 
is one which in the interest of the protection of the health and well-being 
of persons engaged in this form of industrial pursuit calls for legislative 
interference on the part of the State. (Page 97.) 



GERMANY J ahresbertchte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten im Kbnigreich JViirttemburg 
fiir dar Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemburg. 1902.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1903. 

As in the long run the commercial success of a nation depends upon 
its possessing a healthy, skilled, and mentally alert population, a reduc- 
tion of working-women's hours, intelligently systematized, can only be 
advantageous to industry. (Page 188.) 

The ten-hour day for working women can be introduced into all 
branches of industry without real diificulty, and considering the con- 
tinually greater demands that are being made on the physical and mental 
elasticity of workers in general and women in particular, it will be in the 
interests of the maintenance of a healthy working class. (Page 211.) 



Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. S^.] Ed- 
ited by Dr. Th. Weyl. Hygienische Fiirsorge fiir Arbeiterinnen und 
deren Kinder. [Hygienic Care of JVorking Women and their Chil- 
dren.] Dr. Agnes Bluhm, Berlin. Jena, 1894. 

Two leading reasons exist for the newly developing codes of protective 
laws relating to woman in industry. She requires special care because: 

1. She is physically not as strong as man. 

2. She is the bearer of the future race whose health and vigor will 

be markedly influenced by hers, and the State must therefore 
feel the keenest interest in securing a vigorous and efficient 
posterity. (Page 83.) 



NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH OF WOMEN 



249 



Die Arheitsieit der Fahrikarheiterinnen. Nach Berichten der Gewerhe- GERMANY 
Aufsichtsheamten hearheitet im Reich samt der Innern. [The Working 
Hours of Women in Factories. From the Reports of the (German) 
Factory Inspectors. Compiled in the Imperial Home Office.] Berlin, 
Decker, 1905. 

The inspector for Breslau says, " The reduction of the working day to ten 
hours is such a decided step in advance, and is of such marked and whole- 
some influence on the mental, physical, and moral status of the entire 
working population, that its introduction should be emphatically urged." 

The inspector for Cologne says, "The reduction of the working day for 
all women over sixteen years must be regarded as a necessity for both moral 
and hygienic reasons." 

The inspector for Hanover says, "The reasons for the reduction of the 
working day to ten hours — 

{a) The physical organization of woman, 

{h) Her maternal functions, 

{c) The rearing and education of the children, 

{d) The maintenance of the home — 
are all so important and so far reaching that the need for such education 
need hardly be discussed." 

Another inspector says, "Considering the detrimental physical defect 
of factory work, its nerve-exhausting character, its ruinous influence on 
family life, and the care of children, and, indeed, under all the aspects of 
the physical, moral, and mental development of the working class, the 
reduction of the legal working day for women must be regarded as an 
emphatic demand and a moral obligation, whose introduction must be 
urged after a careful and conscientious weighing of all the reasons for 
and against it." (Page 106.) 

Most of those factory inspectors who advise the legal establishment of 
the maximum 10-hour working day dwell with emphasis on the urgent 
necessity of shorter working hours from the standpoint both of health and 
morals. (Page 106.) 



Dehats Parlementaires. Senat. 7^ Juillet, 1891. [Proceedings of the French FRANCE 
Senate, July 7, 1891.] Rapport sur le travail des enfants, des filles 
mineures, et des femmes dans les etahlissements industriels. [Re- 
port on the Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls and 
Women.] 

M. Jules Simon: 

It is impossible for me not to tell the Senate what I think of the position 



250 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE of women in industry, and that I may gain your favor, gentlemen, I ask 

permission to tell you that for at least forty years I have applied myself 
to this question. (Page 573.) 

When I ask, when we ask, for a lessening of the daily toil of women, it 
is not only of the women that we think, it is not principally of the women, 
it is of the whole human race. It is of the father, it is of the child, it is 
of society, which we wish to re-establish on its foundation, from which 
we believe it has perhaps swerved a little. (Page 575.) 



ITALY Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases. 

Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquen^a in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to certain 
Forms of Labor.] Professor Crisafulli. 

Uninterrupted social progress cannot be dissociated from social and 
moral betterment. 

This can be obtained only when the physical and mental welfare of the 
worker shall be protected through rational and efficacious measures; when 
the children shall be shielded through the elimination of all danger of 
degeneration; when woman shall be protected, so that during girlhood 
she shall not enfeeble her natural powers of resistance, and as a mother 
shall be able to perform her duties. (Page 158.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Massachusetts Legislative Documents. House. No. 44. 1867. Report 
of Special Commission on the Hours of Labor. 

Eleven hours' toil each day for six days in each week is more than 
women and children ought to be required to perform. We are certain 
that they cannot do this without impairing, sooner or later, their vital 
powers, and shortening the duration of life. We are confident that it is 
a most uneconomical waste of life, which it is the interest of the State to 
prevent. (Page 8.) 



Report of the Ohio Inspector of Workshops and Factories. 1890. 

... It must be remembered that these female factory employees will 
in all probability at some time become mothers, and to be broken down in 
health when that important period of their life arrives, would certainly be 
conducive to evil results, and a condition we should strenuously endeavor 
to avoid. (Pages 37-38.) 



NEED OF PRESERVING HEALTH OF WOMEN 25 I 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1897. united 

STATES 

. . . Is it not high time that so far as law can effect the labor of the 
"Nation's wards" — the women and children — the hours of labor should 
be limited and regulated; and that so far as governmental power and 
influence can be exerted, it should be upon the side of those who are the 
bone and sinew, the foundation and the mainspring of a country's great- 
ness, prosperity, and progress? (Page 213.) 

Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 1907- 
1908. 

Scientists and thinkers have pointed out that health and vitality are 
the capital of society. It follows, then, that any lessenmg or weakening 
of the natural power of womanhood over the race will be distinctly in- 
jurious. To lower the standard of bodily strength will bring a disastrous 
reaction on society later. To deprive her of mental training means simply 
a retrogression to serfdom — slow, perhaps, but sure. Prevention of these 
things is the object of about all of the laws passed in recent years by 
progressive States and Nations. In too many instances the laws are 
crude and give too wide a latitude for transgressors. (Page ZZ.) 

Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, Industries, and Commerce. 
1907-1908. 

In Europe, where large standing armies are maintained and the physical 
condition of the race as a race is more minutely noted, there has long been 
an appreciation of the importance of maintaining the health of the mother. 
. . . The long period of standing on their feet, the shortened time for 
meals, all combine to militate strongly against, not only her own health, 
but the health of those who shall come after her. (Pages 243-244.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. Irene 
Osgood, Special Agent. 

Unless we change the present demoralizing condition we will continue 
to see women, worn out by the work of their youth, unable to do their 
part in making happy and successful homes. Their children, if not given 
better opportunities, go through the same course and keep up the circle 
of vicious inefficiency. We can look for better conditions only with the 
increased intelligence and efficiency of the more fully developed girl, 



252 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED working in co-operation with an employer who recognizes that she is 

entitled in the workshop to cleanliness, to good sanitation, light, and air; 
to protection from dangerous machinery; to the removal of all brutalizing 
conditions, and of all conditions which place undue strain upon her moral 
character, even to excluding her from employment in certain industries. 
She should be entitled to every safeguard to health, such as shortening the 
work period, the opportunity for a nourishing noon meal; the prevention 
of undue strain upon her body, and breaks during the working hours for 
bodily rest. (Pages 1111-1112.) 

Report of the Washington Bureau of Labor Statistics and Factory Inspection, 
1909-1910. 

By reason of the conditions surrounding them it is undoubtedly true 
that the women wage-earners must look to the state for assistance in 
securing the benefits of a reduced working day. 

Usually the nature of their employment, their fear of losing their 
positions and the fact that others are waiting to take their places combine 
to render it impossible for female wage earners to perfect an organization 
possessing the strength or influence such as is wielded by the unions of 
skilled mechanics. It becomes of moment, therefore, to inquire whether 
the state itself should not enlist its aid in behalf of this class of toilers. . . . 
The fact that many women, under existing conditions, are working con- 
tinually on the verge of physical and nervous exhaustion cannot be con- 
tradicted. Their power of endurance is strained to the utmost at all 
times, and the element of recreation scarcely enters into their lives, for 
the reason that the hours not spent at their work must be devoted to an 
effort to regain their energy for tomorrow's toil. 

Yet it is to these same women wage-earners that the state must look 
in large measure for the mothers of its future citizens, and it would appear, 
therefore, that the state has a vital interest in this phase of the situation. 
As a nation and as a state, we are devoting a great deal of thought and en- 
deavor to the subject of conservation of our natural resources, and it is 
fair to ask if it is not worth while to give some attention to the problem of 
conserving and protecting the physical strength of our wage-earning wo- 
manhood. (Pages 11-12.) 

(3) The Double Burden of Working Women 

Overlong working hours are particularly injurious to 
women because their sex doubles the claims made upon 



WAGE WORK AND HOME DUTIES 253 

them. After working hours domestic duties must be per- 
formed. The unmarried as well as the married woman 
cannot avoid home work for herself or her family, the per- 
formance of which, after the regular day's labor, lengthens 
her working time by several hours. With shorter working 
hours the unavoidable domestic duties may be performed 
without exhausting the workers. 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIV. 1844. great 

BRITAIN 

Sir R. Peel: 

Robert Sutcliffe, an operative, said: . . . "with regard to their own 
families ... If they did not wish their daughters to grow up completely 
unfit for every domestic duty which, as wives and mothers, they would 
be called on in after life to discharge, they must insist on a curtailment of 
the present excessive and protracted toil they endured in the factories. 
He had daughters at work in the factory — they were required to get up at 
five in the morning and they did not get home till eight in the evening, 
and they were then in such a state of exhaustion, both of body and mind, 
they were altogether unfit to learn anything of household economy." 
(Pages 676-677.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXVIII. 1844. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for Half-year ending 31st Dec, 1843. 

The substitution of female for male labour, which has increased to 
so great an extent of late years, is attended with the worst consequences 
to the social condition of the working classes, by the women being with- 
drawn from domestic duties; and diminished comforts at home have the 
most corrupting influence upon the men. All these evils are much ag- 
gravated, when the women are worked so excessively that their life must 
be passed between the workshop and bed. The subject has been re- 
peatedly mentioned to me by some considerate and humane mill owners, 
who know the evils of such a system, and wish to see it put down. 
(Page 4.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVIII. 1856. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending 31st Oct., 1855. 

The necessity of some restriction of labour, for the mitigation of the 
evils of the excessive labour of women and young persons, cannot be 



254 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT doubted; and the effect of such restriction upon their physical and moral 

BRITAIN ,. . . ^^ r ■ ' . , r -/i 

condition is a matter oi serious importance and of vital moment. . . . 
Women were deprived of those hours so requisite to the head of a family 
for her home, and the performance of domestic duties. (Page 81.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories. 

It has been, for instance, the strongest plea for all kinds of relaxations 
under the Factories Acts Extension Act, 1867, during the past year that 
the working classes are beginning to reside 1, 2, or 3 miles from their 
places of work, and in several instances that they come and go by railway. 
On that account, if for no other, the hours of work ought not to be ex- 
tended to 7, 8, or 9 o'clock at night, i. e., to the time of starting the last 
train outward. Nothing could be much worse in a social point of view 
than, for women especially, to have to return home from work at 8, 9, 
or 10 o'clock at night to their families, in all weathers, and out of every 
degree of temperature, if they may ride 2 or 3 miles, to complete their 
days' work in neglected domestic duties. (Page 293.) 



Problems of Poverty. John A. Hobson, M.A. London, Methuen, 1891. 

In estimating the quantity of work which falls to the lot of industrial 
women-workers, we must not forget to add to the wage-work that domestic 
work which few of them can wholly avoid, and which is represented by 
no wages. Looking at the problem in a broad human light, it is difficult 
to say which is the graver evil, the additional burden of the domestic 
work, as far as it is done, or the habitual neglect of it, where it is evaded. 
... To the long hours of the factory worker or the shop-woman, we 
must often add the irksome duties which to a weary wife must make the 
return home a pain rather than a pleasure. (Page 156.) 



Women's Work. A. Amy Bulley and Margaret Whitley. London, 
Methuen, 1894. 

... If the arguments in favour of a general reduction of the hours of 
labour are strong anywhere, they are peculiarly strong in the case of 
women, for in a vast number of cases a woman, when she leaves her daily 
work, has to begin a second spell of work at home. (Page 163.) 



WAGE WORK AND HOME DUTIES 255 

Jahres-Berichie der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich JViirttem- GERMANY 
herg fiir das Jahr 1899. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in tie 
Kingdom of Wiirttemberg, 1899.] Berlin, Reich sdruckerei, 1900. 

The majorit_y of women are employed about 10 hours a day. But 
taking this as the usual workmg day and adding to it the time which a 
married woman must give to her family cares, there results a total working 
day of 13 or 14 hours for her, an amount of labor that is usually not re- 
quired of a single woman. (Page 19.) 

Overfatigue of the nervous system is a result of the work of married 
women in factories: only very strong constitutions are able to bear such 
exertion without harm. (Page 20.) 



Jahres-Berichte der Gewerhe-Aiifsichtsheamten im Konigreich Wiirttemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of Wiirttemberg. 1902.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1903. 

In behalf of the ten-hour day we advance the following reasons: 

First and foremost, women 's health. As already shown, in the report 
for 1899 on "Employment of married women m Factories," serious injury 
arises from strenuous factory work carried on year in and year out in 
combination with work in the home. 

Such over-exertion saps the strength of women prematurely and 
gradually undermines their health. The children of such mothers are, 
according to the overwhelming testimony of trained nurses, doctors, 
clergymen, and others who were consulted by the factory inspectors, 
usually pallid and delicate. 

When, in turn, these children enter the factories right after leaving 
school, a healthy, sturdy, and persistent race is not to be looked for. 
(Pages 186-187.) 



Jahresbericht der Grossherioglich Badischen Fabrikinspektion fiir das Jahr 
1902.] [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1902.] Karlsruhe, 
Thiergarten, 1903. 

Special Report on length of hours of women. 

In the report for 1899 it was exhaustively shown how greatly a re- 
duction of hours was needed for the health, not only of married women, 
but of all women, and it was pointed out that housework and homekeeping 
require time and strength which women, after eleven hours in the factory 
were quite unable to give. Many times did working women tell the in- 



256 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY spectors how exhausting the long workday was, and how greatly they 
desired a shorter day. In opposition to them, employers often declared 
that the women would make no good use of longer leisure, but would only 
idle it away. 

Such ideas have certainly not proved to be correct, nor have they been 
shared by all employers. For instance, the owner of a large factory, 
forced by competition to an 11-hour day, declared that the legal estab- 
lishment of 10 hours would be a blessing for the women. (Page 73.) 

Die Arheitsieit der Fahrikarbeiterinnen. Nach Berichien der Gewerhe- 
AufsicMsheamten bearbeitet im Reich samt des Innern. [The Working 
Hours of IVomen in Factories. From the Reports of the {German) 
Factory Inspectors, Compiled in the Imperial Home Office^ Berlin, 
Decker, 1905. 

From Cassel: 

It is important to remember what a shortening of working hours means 
to the working woman who has to go a long distance to and from her 
work. Often an hour is spent thus, making it not 10 hours, but 12 hours 
that the worker is compelled to be away from home. (Page 109.) 

It was frequently pointed out that the interests of working women re- 
quire a shorter day because of the necessary household duties which they 
often have to perform after working hours. The inspector from Wurt- 
temburg said: "It often happens that married and unmarried women 
must work for hours at home before and after going out to the mill or 
shop, whereas the stronger man is entirely exempt from this additional 
labor." (Page 110.) 

The inspector for Upper Bavaria dwells upon the advantage accruing 
to the health of working-girls as follows: 

"In the matter of health the shortening of the working hours is of 
unusual value, because for them free time is not resting time, as it is 
for a man. For the working-girl on her return from the factory there is a 
variety of work waiting. She has her room to keep clean and in order, 
her laundry work to do, clothes to repair and clean, and, besides this, 
she should be learning to keep house if her future household is not to be 
disorderly and a failure." (Page HI.) 

Many mspectors urge the need of shortening the hours of labor on 
grounds of morality. From Offenbach it is reported: "The period 
before marriage is the time for learning the future profession, but during 
this period the factory worker is exposed to strain and fatigue, which 
hinder her bodily development and deprive her of educational oppor- 



WAGE WORK AND HOME DUTIES 257 

tunity. Desirable, therefore, would be a reduction of the working hours Germany 
which should give to married women more time for their housework and 
family life, and to the younger unmarried women the opportunity to 
learn the art of home-making, because upon this the health, welfare, and 
prosperity of her whole family will depend." (Page 113.) 

Schriften der Gesellschaft filr Soiiale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publications of 
the Social Reform Society. Nos. 7 and <?.] Die Herabsetiung der 
Arheitsieit fiir Frauen und die Erhohiingdes Schutialters fiir Jugendliche 
Arheiter in Fabriken. [The Reduction of Women's Working Hours 
and the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The protection of health takes precedence over everything else. The 
health of women is more quickly undermined in wage-earning occupations 
than that of men, partly because they are less strong and resistant and 
partly because they are burdened with domestic as well as industrial 
labor — more especially when, as married women, they have to care for a 
family. (Page 4.) 

Whether the working woman as such is less resistant to injurious con- 
ditions than the working man is immaterial. What is important to re- 
member is that her sex doubles the claims made upon her, and it is this 
that undermines her vital resistance. To the physiological burdens and 
the overwork due to a combination of housework and industrial toil, 
imperfect nutrition, and deficient recreation are often to be added — she 
has, in short, distinctly, an average standard of living that is inferior to 
that of men. (Page 91.) 

The reports of 1899 (Germany) upon factory work for married women 
gave the inspectors occasion to advocate — as they did in almost every 
part of the country — a progressive reduction of working hours to 10 and 
9 hours, and, especially for girls under 18, to 8 hours. Their investiga- 
tions amply exposed the vicious circle of destructive influences that the 
working-woman traverses. As a young girl, her health is early sacrificed; 
as a grown woman, she is driven between home duties and wage-earning. 
She succumbs without having been able to guide the life of her family to a 
prosperous development. (Page 109.) 

Handhuch der Medi^inischen Statistik. [Handbook of Medical Statistics.] 
Dr. Friedrich Prinzing, Ulm. Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

The injurious effects of factory work on married women are noticeable 
in many ways. Factory work is chiefly detrimental to married women 
17* 



258 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY because of the unreasonable demands made upon their strength by the 
combination of factory with housework. On social grounds the prohibi- 
tion of factory work for married women is not practicable, but much may 
be done to protect the health of such women by legal restriction and regu- 
lation of working hours, ample rest legally secured, and special provisions 
for pregnancy and the period of lactation. (Page 129.) 



FRANCE 



UNITED 
STATES 



Dehats Parlementaires. Senat. 9^ Juillet, 1891. [Proceedings of the French 
Senate, July 9, 1891.] Rapport sur le travail des enfants, des filles 
mineures, et des femmes dans les etahlissements industriels. [Report 
on the Industrial Employment of Children, Young Girls, and Women.] 

M. Waddington: 

The woman wage-earner, gentlemen, does not always live at the mill- 
gates; she is therefore obliged to make a half or three-quarters' hour 
journey before she arrives; consequently she will leave home at half-past 
five in the morning, only to return at half-past eight or nine o'clock m 
the evening. Is that living? Under such circumstances can a woman 
truly care for her children and her home? (Page 584.) 

La Protection Legale des Travailleurs. [Legal Protection of Working 
People.] Discussions of the French Section of the International As- 
sociation for Labor Legislation, 3rd Series, 1905-1906. Paris, Alcan, 
1907. 

After the woman has worked the same number of hours in mill or shop 
that men have done, she goes home and has to do more work there. 
(Page 182.) 

Report of the Colorado Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1887-1888. 

I think ten hours a day too long for female workers. Many of them 
have to cook, clean, wash, and sometimes care for some sick person in 
their family, and also do many other things too numerous to mention, after 
a hard day's work. They cannot afford to have such work done for them; 
their pay is far too small. (Page 336.) 



Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. 1888. 

I think that if Saturday afternoons were given to the working women 
for recreation, the amount of good done would more than compensate for 
the loss of labor or money. Considering the various demands upon the 



WAGE WORK AND HOME DUTIES 259 

working woman's time outside of work hours, — in caring for her room and united 

• • ... STATES 

clothes and numerous other duties, — it seems that this provision should 
be made for her. (A worker.) (Page 101.) 

Report of the Ohio Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1889. 

Working women even more than working men suffer because of long 
hours of labor. Generally speaking, they work many more hours every 
day than men, because after the day in the workshops is ended many of 
them must be occupied with household cares, while men may rest. Ten 
hours a day to at least one-third of the working women means oftener 
fifteen. (Page 47.) 

Report of the Illinois Factory Inspectors. 1893. 

In many cases the shortening of the day has been in the morning, so 
that w^omen and children who have had a long walk or ride before reaching 
the factory at 7 o'clock, now sleep an hour later and reach their work at 
8. The mother of the family, who rises still earlier to cook the breakfast 
and put up the lunch, also profits by this added hour of rest. (Page 19.) 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1899. 

Where is the man who dare say regulation by law is not necessary . . . 
in case of public works of females? It is idle to say they are able to take 
care of themselves; they cannot, and while legal restrictions must not be 
made to hinder women from earning an honest living under suitable 
conditions, there is one principle which must be applied as a test of suit- 
ability in all situations — the proved tendency of their occupation under 
certain conditions to destroy health and unfit them for their duties as 
wives and mothers. And what will happen to a home when the mother 
is compelled to work in a factory ten hours, toiling all day, coming back 
after dark to her children, weary, jaded, fretful, almost desperate? Tidi- 
ness, cleanliness, and happiness are impossible. (Page 61.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

The wife's life is darkened even more by the long-hour day, especially 
if she also be a working woman. Even if the day be one of only ten hours, . 
she must arise as early as five o'clock to prepare breakfast for her husband 
and herself, so that they may be at their work places at seven. Beginning 
at that early hour her day will be a very long one. (Page 70.) 



26o 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics. Part II. 1906. 

Time leaving home for work and reaching home from work, ride or 
walk, car fare. 

Record obtained from those (working women) reporting as to the 
hours when leaving home for work and the hours reaching home after 
the day's work. 2535 reported as to the time leaving home for work. 
Of this number 20.8 per cent had to leave home in the morning before 
6.30 o'clock; 54.6 per cent from 6.30 to 7.00 and 24.6 per cent at 7.00 
A. M. or later. 

The number reporting the time arriving home from work was 2486. 
Of this number 9.1 per cent reached home in the evening before 5.00 to 
5.30; 20 per cent from 5.30 to 6.00; 49.2 per cent from 6.00 to 6.30, and 
21.7 per cent 6.30 and later. 

Car fare is an expense incident to the working girl, especially in larger 
cities, where factories and other places are liable to be located remote from 
residence districts. The record here shown is for 2484 women or girls. 
60.7 per cent walk to and from their work, 35.4 per cent use the cars, and 
3.9 per cent both ride and walk. (Page 195.) 



(4) Effect of Women's Overwork on Future Generations 

When the health of women has been injured by long 
hours, not only is the working efficiency of the community 
impaired, but the deterioration is handed down to succeed- 
ing generations. The overwork of future mothers thus 
directly menaces the welfare of the state. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1833. Second Report of the . . . 
Commissioners for inquiring into the employment of Children in Fac- 
tories, . . . and Reports by the Medical Commissioners. 

Sir David Barry's report (Scotland): 

Having on one occasion given a certificate to the effect that I believed 
that persons occupied in factories were not more subject to disease than 
those engaged in other occupations, and having, on further experience had 
reason to doubt the correctness of the views I then held, ... on a 
similar certificate being presented to me last year, I declined to sign it. 
... I believe it will be found to be the case that nearly all the wives of 
weavers and many of those of labourers, formerly worked in factories; 



women's overwork and future generations 261 

and even giving the circumstances of low wages, and consequent domestic great 
privations, their due weight, I think we have reason to fear that the de- 
scendants of those people are physically deteriorating. . . . A. C. Kil- 
gour, M.D. (Page 30.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Com- 
mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. 

Witness, W. Abbotts, M.D.: 

2000. Does their employment injuriously affect them as child-bearing 
women in after years? According to all scientific facts it would do so; 
it leads to pelvic diseases, and would affect them in after years when they 
become mothers. . . . 

2007. And you, as a medical man of a considerable number of years' 
experience would not look to girls who have been worked so many hours 
in one position, standing, as the bearers of healthy, strong children? — 
1 should not. 

2008. Then it naturally follows, does it not, that this is a very serious 
matter in the interests of the nation as a whole, apart from the immediate 
injury to the person concerned? — Yes, as regards the physical condition of 
the future race. (Page 102.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1892. Select Committee on Shop 
Hours Bill. 

Witness, Mr. Sutherst, Barrister and author of "Disease and Death 
Behind the Counter": 

1361. You have stated . . . that the women are handicapped by 
their physical inequalities? — Decidedly; they are expected to become 
mothers, and the very long standing and overwork prevents them from 
rearing subsequently a healthy progeny. (Page 60.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIX. 1893. Report of Royal Com- 
mission on Labour. 

Mr. Henry Mayers Hyndman: 

8409. . . . Under present conditions, especially in the case of women, 
. . . the hours of work are injurious to them; it is directly injurious to 
them in every shape and way, and helps to enfeeble the coming generation 
owing to the weakness of mothers after those long periods of standing and 
toiling. (Page 595.) 



262 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXII. 1904. Report of the Inter- 

BRITAIN r J 

Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. Vols. I, II, III. 

Committee report: 

251. A very general agreement was expressed that the factory employ- 
ment of mothers had a bad effect on the offspring, both direct and indirect. 

253. The three ladies quoted by Miss Anderson (Principal Lady 
Inspector of Factories) were unanimous as to the stress and strain in- 
volved in the "employment of women from girlhood, all through married 
life, and through child-bearing." (Vol. I, page 47.) 

Ibid. Memorandum on Employment of Mothers in Factories and IVork^ 
shops. By Miss A. M. Anderson, H. M. Principal Lady Inspector 
of Factories. 

30. As to the general effect of these conditions on the health of the 
women and their children. Miss Squire for Lancashire, and Miss Paterson 
for Dundee report similarly: 

"That it is the employment of women from childhood, all through 
married life, and through child-bearing, that impresses itself upon the 
mind . . . that it is useless for medical men and others not familiar with 
the conditions of mill life there to pronounce any opinion on the effect 
of factory work upon the mother and infant; they have no conception of 
the stress and strain and of the general conditions of life and work in 
these mills. (Vol. I, page 124.) 

Miss Paterson expressly points to cases showing that it is the stress 
and strain of the work, and the necessity of maintaining a high standard, 
coupled with decreasing physical capacity of the child-bearing woman 
under such conditions that generally determine the moment when the 
manager in a jute mill sends her home. . . . Sometimes a neighbor will take 
her place in the mill of the woman who has been sent home on account of 
her physical inability to maintain her output, in return for her taking 
charge of that neighbour's children for a small sum. (Vol. I, page 124.) 

. . . Great harm is done and suffering occasioned to the women by 
their remaining at work too long before confinement, as well as by their 
returning too soon after it. . . . Two of the doctors with whom Miss 
Squire conferred in Preston attributed the large number of premature 
births to continued work in the mill during pregnancy and all considered 
that an exceptional number of cases of uterine trouble existed and was 
attributable to too early return to work. (Vol. I, page 124.) 

Dr. W. Leslie Mackensie, M.A., M.D., M.R.C.P.E., Medical In- 
spector to the Local Government Board for Scotland: 



women's overwork and future generations 263 

6749. If the mother suffers from insufficient food or from exhaustion great 
or over-work, or disease, the result is that disease is shown in the child? — Britain 
That is my opinion. . . . 

6752. And precautions should be taken that she should not suffer 
from overwork during the period of child-bearing? — Yes; before and after 
child-bearing. (Vol. II, page 266.) 

6897. Now, in your memorandum, I note this passage. You say, 
"If inherited characters are to mature, therefore, the mother must re- 
main (a) capable of maintaining her own physical equilibrium, (b) capable 
of giving her excess of nourishment to the embryo. If she fails in (a) or 
(b) the embryo either dies or suffers in rate of growth, or in ultimate size." 
Well, then, 1 suppose, from that we should draw the conclusion that in 
your opinion the child of a slum mother would be born defective in growth? 
— It may be so. 

6899. And the same with the factory worker? — Yes, I think so. (Vol. 
II, page 272.) 

The Factory System. Illustrated in a series of letters to the Right Hon. Lord 
Ashley, M.P. William Dodd. London, John Murray, 1842. 

Of the evil tendency of factory life on women and children, Mr. Greg 
speaks thus: 

"The fourth cause of ill-health, which prevails among the manufactur- 
ing population may be traced to the injurious influence which the weakened 
and vitiated constitution of women has upon their children." 

"They are often employed in factories some years after their marriage, 
and during their pregnancy, and up to the very period of their confine- 
ment, which all who have attended to the physiology of this subject know 
must send their offspring into the world with a debilitated and unhealthy 
frame, which the circumstances of their infancy are ill-calculated to 
renovate. Hence, when these children begin to work themselves, they 
are prepared at once to succumb to the evil influences by which they are 
surrounded." (Pages 139-40.) 

Infant Mortality: A Social Problem. Geo. Newman, M.D., D.P.H., 
F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Public Health at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
London; Medical Officer of Health, Metropolitan Borough, Finsbury, 
London, Methuen, 1906. 

Physical fatigue, particularly if accompanied by a strain and stress, are 
likely to exert a decided effect in the production of premature birth, par- 



264 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



ticularly if these conditions are accompanied by long hours of work and 
poor or insufficient nourishment. (Page 80.) 

The direct injuries to women and girls employed in factories and work- 
shops are: (c) Injury through fatigue and strain, long hours and insuf- 
ficient periods of rest for food, . . . and (e) Too short a period of rest at 
the time of childbirth. Over and over again, in the official reports of 
factory inspectors or medical officers of health, does one meet with evi- 
dences of these injuries. Where the conditions resulting in these evils, 
coupled with the absence of the mother from home, are present, the infant 
mortality is high; where they are not present, it is usually low. (Pages 
131-132.) 

In consequence of the fact that while there has been a steady and con- 
tinuous decline in the general mortality of Preston during the past thirty 
years, the infant mortality has shown an increase, a sub-committee v/as 
appointed to inquire into the causes (1902), and submitted certain con- 
clusions: 

(1) First among these causes is the employment of female labor in 
mills. An occupation requiring a woman to stand during the greater 
part of the day when continued up to within a few days or even hours of 
the time of parturition, must act to the detriment of the offspring, and 
there is less chance of the latter coming into the world fully grown, well 
formed, and in good health. Many deaths taking place during the first 
month, which are returned as due to premature birth, immaturity, con- 
genital debility, convulsions, and the like, may safely be ascribed to this 
cause. (Page 134.) 

In a general way it may be said that it is the employment of women 
from girlhood all through married life and through the period of child- 
bearing, the continual stress and strain of the work and hours, and general 
conditions prevailing in women's labor, that is exerting its baneful in- 
fluence on the individual and on the home. (Page 136.) 



GERMANY Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 103. Sit^ung, 18. April, 1891. [Proceed- 
ings of the German Reichstag, 103rd Session, April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Ulrich: 

All the reasons that can be oflfered in support of a shortened work day 
in general, hold with double force in favor of shortening the working time 
of women. For the danger of degeneration of the race is actually greater 
on the mother's than on the father's side. ... On the one hand excessive 
work breaks down the woman personally, on the other hand, through her 
break-down, it destroys the home. For this reason chiefly the dark side 



women's overwork and future generations 265 

of female labor is extraordinarily more significant than is usually realized. Germany 
(Page 2410.) 

Die Arheitsieit der Fahrikarbeiterinnen. Nach Berichten der Gewerhe- 
Aufsichtsbeamte?i bearbeitet im Reich samt des Innern. [The Working 
Hours of Women in Factories. From the Reports of the {German) Fac- 
tory Inspectors. Compiled in the Imperial Home Office.] Berlin, 
Decker, 1905. 

The reports from Merseburg, Erfurt, Breslau, Hanover, Wiirttemberg, 
and Offenbach dwell upon the dependence of future generations — their 
total efficiency and value — upon the protection of working women and 
girls. (Page 111.) 

The report for Wiirttemberg says, in regard to the injurious effect of 
factory work : "The children of such mothers — according to the unanimous 
testimony of nurses, physicians, and others who were interrogated on 
this important subject — are mostly pale and weakly; when these in turn, 
as usually happens, must enter upon factory work immediately upon 
leaving school, to contribute to the support of the family, it is impossible 
for a sound, sturdy, enduring race to develop." (Page 111.) 

Handbuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] Ed- 
ited by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Hygienische Filrsorgefiir Arbeiterinnen 
und deren Kinder. [Hygienic Care of Working Women and their 
children.] Dr. Agnes Bluhm. Jena, 1894. 

Women bear the following generation whose health is essentially in- 
fluenced by that of the mothers, and the State has a vital interest in se- 
curing for itself future generations capable of living and maintaining it. 
(Page 83.) 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans VIndustrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Prof. Etienne 
Bauer. [The Nightwork of Women in Industry. Reports on its 
importance and legal regulation.] Interdiction du travail de nuit des 
femmes en Allemagne. [Prohibition of nightwork for women in Ger- 
many.] Dr. Max Hirsch. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The influence of improper factory labor ... on future generations is 
exerted both before and after child birth. Great importance is attached 
to the general effect of labor on the sexual organs, even on the general 
health of the female worker, and that at a very early period. A woman 



266 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY with an enfeebled and emaciated body, ... is, according to experience, 
less capable, or even absolutely incapable of producing healthy and robust 
offspring. The ailments of both a special and a general sort, due to un- 
suitable work, weigh heavily and in advance of birth, in many cases, on 
the descendants. Aside from the fact that female factory workers are 
frequently deprived of children, as a result of complete sterility or frequent 
abortions or still births, the surviving infants suffer much of the time from 
feebleness and sicknesses of all kmds, so that they bear with them from 
the cradle the causes of premature death, to which must be added the 
effective evils and dangers of a durable character which are manifested 
during the period of lactation and up to the last period of infant life. 
(Page 26.) 

A very considerable number of reports indicate as a cause of the ex- 
cessive mortality of suckling infants, besides insufficient nourishment, 
the insufficient care given to them, since the mother is prevented by work 
at the factory from devoting herself sufficiently to her children when 
they are in good health, and even when they are sick. . . . It is indeed 
sad for innumerable women to be injured in health, in vitality, and robbed 
of the full pleasure of living, through the conditions of industrial labor; 
but the crime of society takes on huge proportions when, for the love of 
additional gain, very often extremely small, the flower of the new genera- 
tion is crushed and blighted. 

But if such are the effects of normal work by women during the day, 
they are very much worse in the case of the prolongation of the hours of 
work, above all when the work continues late in the evening and into the 
night. Not only that the fatigue and exhaustion of the mother increases 
in a progressive ratio with each additional hour, but also that she is kept 
from exercising her motherhood precisely at the time when her care is 
most indispensable to her little ones. (Pages 27-28.) 



FRANCE Revue d'Hygiene et de Police Sanitaire. La Protection de la Femme dans 

V Industrie. [The Protection of Woman in Industry.] Dr. Henri 
Napias. Paris, Masson et Cie. T. XVIII. 20 Mars, 1896. 

Everyone knows that there is still much to do, and that, if our legisla- 
tion has already bettered conditions, new ameliorations are desirable, but 
they will come, I think, only through the pressure of public opinion, 
. . . which will become exacting . . . when doctors have made clear the 
utility of a protection which looks not only to the woman, but, secon- 
darily, the child to be born by her; when it knows better that to protect 
the mother is an absolute necessity for the future of the race. (Page 193.) 



WOMEN S OVERWORK AND FUTURE GENERATIONS 



267 



Proceedings of the 1st International Convention on Industrial Diseases. ITALY 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquen^a in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. {Imbecility and Criminality in relation to certain 
forms of labor.] Prof. Crisafulli. 

A great number of born deficients are the offspring of mothers worn 
out by work from girlhood: work not alone precocious but also over- 
fatiguing and unhealthful; and these mothers were tortured by toil 
even during the period of their pregnancy. The ailments of the pregnant 
woman which react painfully upon the foetus, the hardships of childbirth, 
the sicknesses of infancy, etc., can easily be traced, among certain classes 
of workers; in the majority of cases they are recognized as direct and 
essential causes of imbecility; arrested or deficient mental development, 
at least in great measure, can also be traced to such causes. (Page 146.) 

... On the other hand, over-fatigue often generates hereditary weak- 
ness, both physical and moral, by reason of which many unfortunates 
never attain their full development, and, in course of time they commit 
essentially instinctive acts that, if not absolutely criminal, are certainly 
irrational. (Page 149.) 



Evidence Submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- 
ment of a Ten-Hour Law. Lawrence, 1870. 

I have no hesitation in saying that I am fully satisfied that the long 
hours of confinement in the atmosphere of the mills is very injurious to 
health, and of such an enervating nature, as to operate very unfavorably 
upon the offspring — for of course if the parents are feeble, the offspring 
must inevitably be of a feeble and sickly nature. (Page 8.) John B. 
Whitaker, M.D. 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1870. 

It debilitates them, and makes them unfit for the reproduction of their 
kind. Young women, as a general rule, do not make good housekeepers 
when brought up in a cotton mill, not having opportunity enough to 
initiate themselves into such duties on account of the long hour system. 
(Pages 312-313.) Employee. 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Maryland Bureau of Industrial Statistics. 1896. 

Once inside the walls of the factory a weary day's work of ten hours' 
duration is begun, with an intermission for lunch at noon. . . . 



268 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

XJHiTED When the day's work is at last over, the wearied crowd trooping from 

their place of employment hasten in all directions to their homes, which 
in many instances are in the extreme suburbs of the city. Once home, 
they swallow a hasty supper and soon retire to a needed and deserved rest, 
with no pleasant anticipations for the morrow. 

What lives are these for future wives and mothers? Future generations 
will answer. (Page 52.) 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor. 1908. 

It is a matter of common knowledge that the consequences to the 
citizenship of the state, both at the time and in the future, are more 
grave if women work in the wrong trades, or too many hours or under 
improper conditions. It injures the mothers of our citizens, so that in- 
fants are born to die young, or grow into men weak and sickly — which is 
bad for the state as well as themselves. . . . We shall begin to see that 
... for the mjury to the women, the mothers, the homes, and the rising 
generation, there must be special laws for the conditions under which 
women work. (Page 337.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VH. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. By 
Irene Osgood, Special Agent. 

The effect upon the home and upon society of the woman who has 
been forced to run the gauntlet of industrial or occupational diseases, has 
never been measured. Her lack of knowledge of domestic affairs conse- 
quent upon her former enforced freedom from household cares, and her 
ignorance concerning the welfare of children, must necessarily make for 
domestic unhappiness, and for another race of children poorly prepared to 
meet the hardships of working class life. (Page 1061.) 

Journal of Political Economy. Vol. XIV. 1906. Legislative Control 
of Women's Work. S. P. Breckinridge. 

The assumption of control over the conditions under which industrial 
women are employed is one of the most significant features of recent 
legislative policy. In many of the advanced industrial communities the 
State not only undertakes to prescribe a minimum of decency, safety, and 
healthfulness, below which its wage-earners may not be asked to go, but 
takes cognizance in several ways of sex differences and sex relationships. 



INFANT MORTALITY 269 

. . . In the third place, the State sometimes takes cognizance of the pecu- united 

STATES 

liarly close relationship which exists between the health of its women 
citizens and the physical vigor of future generations. ... It has been 
declared a matter of public concern that no group of its women workers 
should be allowed to unfit themselves by excessive hours of work, by 
standing, or other physical strain, for the burden of motherhood which 
each of them should be able to assume. (Page 107.) 

The object of such control is the protection of the physical well-being 
of the community by setting a limit to the exploitation of the improvident, 
unworkmanlike, unorganized women who are yet the mothers, actual or 
prospective, of the coming generation. (Pages 108, 109.) 



(5) Infant Mortality 

Experience and medical observation show that overwork 
before as well as after marriage has a disastrous effect upon 
childbirth. The death rate is high among children of 
women who have overworked during girlhood as well as 
among children of working mothers. 

Overwork during pregnancy and too soon after child- 
birth, together with the inevitable neglect of infants by 
mothers who are kept away from home by overlong work- 
ing hours, are further contributing causes to a high infant 
mortality. 

Besides their high death rate at birth and during the 
first years of infancy, the children of exhausted workers 
are below the normal in size and weight. 



BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1873. Reports of the Inspectors great 
of Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1872. 

Mr. R. H. Leach, certifying surgeon for upwards of thirty years, says: 
Shorten their hours of labor, for I believe that scores of infants are 
annually lost under the present system. As things now stand, a mother 
leaves her infant (say of two months old) at 6 a. m., often asleep in bed, 
at 8 she nurses it, then until 12.30 the child is bottle fed, or stuffed with 
indigestible food. On her return at noon, overheated and exhausted, her 
milk is unfit for the child's nourishment, and this state of things is again 



270 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT repeated until 6 p. m.; the consequence is, that the child suffers from spas- 

modic diarrhoea, often complicated with convulsions and ending in death. 
(Page 56.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. LV. 1873. Report to the Local Govern- 
ment Board on Proposed Changes in Hours and Ages of Employment 
in Textile Factories. By J. H. Bridges, M.D., and T. Holmes. 

Experience afforded by residence in the worsted manufacturing town 
of Bradford, and extensive practise among its population during periods 
of from one to thirty-five years: 

Q. Has the labor any tendency to increase the rate of infant mortality? 
A. Yes. The evils occurring in women . . . indirectly affect the 
more perfect growth of the child in utero, and dispose it when born more 
easily to become diseased. 

Signed on behalf of the Bradford Medico Chirurgical Society, at a 
meeting held February 4, 1873. 

Sub-Committee. 

President, ]. H. Bell, M.D. 

P. E. MiALL, M.R.C.S. 
Secretary, David Goyder, M.D. 
(Pages 39, 40.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXII. 1904. Report of the Inter- 
Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. Vols. I, II, III. 
1904. 

English Mortality among Infants under One Year of Age. Prepared 
under Dr. Tatham's direction, from the Official Returns in the General 
Register Office. 

. . . In the years 1873-77 the rates in the urban countries were higher 
than those in the rural by 26 per cent among male and by 29 per cent 
among female children, while in the years 1898-1902 the differences had 
increased to 30 per cent and 34 per cent respectively. . . . 

Taking together diarrhoeal diseases and diseases of the stomach and 
liver, the recent five years show an increase of more than 70 per cent in 
the urban and of nearly 70 per cent in the rural countries. 

. . . The increased mortality from diarrhoeal diseases is probably 
attributable in great part to the prevalence of artificial infant feeding, 
and this view appears to be consistent with the fact that the increase has 
been greater in the urban than in the rural countries. (Vol. I, page 130.) 



INFANT MORTALITY 27 1 

Anthropometric Report of the Committee of the British Association of great 
1883. ^^^""^ 

It would appear, therefore, that the physical (and most probably the 
mental) proportions of a race, and their uniformity within certain limits 
are largely dependent upon the size of the female pelvis, which acts as a 
gauge as it were of the race, and eliminates the largest infants, especially 
those with large heads (and presumably more brains) by preventing their 
survival at birth. . . . 

. . . Note. It is probably in this direction that we must look for an 
explanation of the degenerative influences of . . . sedentary occupa- 
tions, as they . . . favour the production of . . . imperfectly developed 
bodies of women. (Vol. II, page 98.) 



Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 
Vol. 26. 1882. Infant Mortality. Thomas M. Dolan, F.R.C.S. 
London, Longmans, 1883. 

We can produce statistics which prove that the death rate of infants, 
the offspring of women who are engaged as operatives, is so high as to 
require some special explanation to account for it; and still more we can 
furnish evidence which seems to connect this high death rate with the 
employment of women in factories. . . . (Page 358.) I . . . asked 
several practitioners . . . who attended a large number of operatives, 
"Could you fix the annual number of infantile deaths during the last five 
years attributable in your opinion to the employment of the mothers in 
factories before or too soon after labour?" Five replied fixing the mor- 
tality at 15 to 20 per annum, two were of opinion that 20 per cent of in- 
fantile deaths should be assigned to this cause. . . . Since 1872 I have . . . 
attended over 2800 cases of midwifery among that class. My increased 
experience convinces me of the correctness of my views. (Page 361.) 

In further confirmation of them it is singular how unanimous all 
medical officers of health are in assigning the employment of women in 
factories as a cause of infant mortality. 

... Dr. Harris Butterfield, Medical Officer of Health for Bradford 
. . . comments on the excessive mortality of infants in our large towns. 
This mortality he attributes in great measure to the too early weaning 
of infants by mothers employed in factories. . . . 

Dr. Dudley, Medical Officer of Health, Staleybridge . . . calls the 
attention of the authorities to the excessive infant mortality to the dis- 
trict. This he attributes to the same causes. . . . (Page 361.) 

M. Jean Dolphus, one of the largest manufacturers in Alsatia, found 



272 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



that the women employed in his factory lost 40 per cent of their children 
in the first year, the average mortality at that age being there 18. (Page 
363.) 



Infant Mortality. A Social Problem. George Newman, M.D., D.P.H., 
F.R.S.E., Lecturer on Public Health at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, 
London; Medical Officer of Health, Metropolitan Borough, Finsbury. 
London, Methuen, 1906. 

A nation grows out of its children, and if its children die in infancy it 
means that the sources of a nation's population are being sapped, and 
further that the conditions that kill such a large proportion of infants 
injure many of those which survive. Last year, 1905, there was a loss to 
the nation of 120,000 dead infants, in England and Wales alone, a figure 
which is almost exactly one quarter of all the deaths in England and Wales 
in that year. (Page 2.) 

And this enormous sacrifice of human life is being repeated year by 
year and is not growing less. (Page 7.) 

Nor is England alone. . . . The birth rate is declining in civilized na- 
tions with few exceptions; and the same may be said of the death rate. 
But the infant mortality rate, as a rule, is stationary or even increasing. 

There are two features, however, which appear to be common to the 
high infant mortality districts, namely, a high density of population and a 
considerable degree of manufacturing industry. (Page 26.) 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans VIndustrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Nightwork of Women in Industry. Its importance and legal regula- 
tion. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Moreover and above all we observe in all countries where woman is 
protected a lessening of female and also of infant mortality. In England 
the convincing argument drawn from this fact has often been cited. 
There among 100 new-born the proportion of infants dying in the first 
year of their existence was 15 per cent from 1873 to 1875 in England and 
Wales, and 12.8 per cent in Scotland; by contrast, the percentages were 
respectively only 14.6 and 12.2 from 1884 to 1893. From 1873 to 1875 
the percentage rose to 16.75 in seven great centres of industry. In 
Switzerland there was noted a similar reduction in infant mortality, which 
averaged from 1871 to 1880, 19.3 per cent, and from 1881 to 1890, only 
16.5 per cent. . . . (Pages xxxvii, xxxviii.) 



INFANT MORTALITY 273 

Annalen des Deutschen Reichs, Bd. 21, 1888. [Annals of the German Em- Germany 
-pire, Vol. 21, 1888.] Der Internationale Schuti der Arheiter. [In- 
ternational Labor Legislation.] Dr. George Adler, University of 
Freiburg. Munich and Leipsic, Mirth, 1888. 

The worst physiological eifects of factory work for women were shown 
by the increased number of still-births. In the district of Miilhausen, 
between 1875-79, not less than 58 still-born infants to 1000 births were 
reported, whilst in country regions the proportion was only 30-40 per 
1000. 

The death rate of infants in their first year also increased startlingly 
as a result of industrial toil for women. Thus for Miilhausen and its 
district, between 1873-82, infant mortality was, on an average, 240 to 
1000 infants born living. Naturally also, this region furnished a smaller 
quota of military recruits than the numbers of its population should have 
warranted. (Page 470.) 



Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 103. Sit^ung, 18. April, 1891. [Proceedings 
of the German Reichstag, 103rd Session, April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Bebel: 

The effect of the excessive industrial labor of women upon the death 
rate of infants is shown by some statistics of Saxony, which comprise the 
period from 1880 to 1885, and show the death rate of children in their 
first year in the industrial towns and districts. The mortality of infants 
under a year old in the cities of the whole empire averaged 28.5 per cent, 
while in those cities of pre-eminently manufacturing importance, it rose 
from 36 to 45 per cent, and in those where women were employed in the 
highest numbers, as in the vicinity of Chemnitz, it rose from 40 to over 
50 per cent. (Page 2420.) 



Zeitschrift der So^iale IVissenschaft, Bd. VIII, Nr. 10, 1905. Die Frucht- 
harkeit selbst arbeitender und den arbeitenden Stdnden angehoriger 
Frauen. [The Fertility of Women of the Working Classes and of those 
Engaged in Industry.] 

This subject has been investigated by Prof. Ugo Broggi, who, in an 
article in the Zeitschrift fiir Versicherungswissenschaft (July 1, 1905) 
states that of 172,365 Italian women between the ages of 15 and 54 years 
who were employed in industrial occupations the average child-bearing 
co-efficient was only 45 per thousand, or about one-third of the general 



274 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY fertility of Italian women (120 per 1000). The investigation, in detail, 
included 7029 working women in chemical industries and collieries. The 
average fertility was 46 per cent. 1595 women in food factories showed 
an average fertility of 39 per cent; 134,770 women in the textile trades, 
39 per cent; and 28,971 in varied industries such as paper, wood, clothing, 
tobacco factories, etc., 73 per cent. Thus, throughout, a lower fertility 
than the normal. One exception only was noted, in the women employed 
by the state in the state tobacco manufactories, who, with a fertility of 
104 per cent came nearest in their child-bearing capacity to the average 
of the entire female population. (Pages 663-664.) 

FRANCE Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 

1907. Vol. II. Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. [Over- 
work as a Result of Occupation.] Dr. Imbert, University of Montpel- 
lier. Berlin, Hirschwald, 1908. 

Pinard and his pupils have shown that the period of gestation is of 
shorter duration in working classes than it is in well-to-do classes. 

Again, the average weight of infants at birth is inferior accordingly as 
the mother has labored up to the time of delivery or when her work has 
been very hard. (Page 641.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the New York Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1890. 

In his report to the federal government of Switzerland, dated Berne, 
1889, Dr. Decurtius, states that in the few years since a law was passed 
in his country forbidding the employment of women for six weeks after 
their confinement, the mortality of children, including the still-born, de- 
creased from twenty-nine per cent to five per cent. The same decrease 
was observed in Mulhausen, the great manufacturing city of Alsace, 
where, owing to the efl'orts of some philanthropic employers, a general 
voluntary observance of similar rules prevails, and adequate provision is 
made for the care of the mother during her absence from the factory. 
But Dr. Decurtius makes, furthermore, the important statement that, 
while the mortality of such children is not sensibly greater than that of 
the children of artisans and farm laborers, so long as the mothers are thus 
kept from factory work and taken care of, it immediately increases as soon 
as they return to work. (Pages 81, 82.) 

According to Dr. Otto Pringsheim, while the average mortality of 
children in the Netherlands is 18.88 per cent, it is twenty-one, thirty and 
thirty-three per cent in the manufacturing cities of Maestricht, Eindhoven 
and Gonda, respectively. This higher rate in the cities named he attrib- 



INFANT MORTALITY 275 

utes, emphatically, to the hard labor of female workers and the dissolution united 

STATES 

of family life by the factory system. (Page 82.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909. 
Woman and Child IVage-Earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

The Dundee investigations suggest, though sufficient statistics were 
not obtained to confirm the point, that the employment of women in 
factories before childbirth may cause their children to be of light weight; 
and the deaths due to a number of causes attributable to the general con- 
dition of prematurity are probably larger than the average among the 
infants of this class of workers. 

The relation of the factory employment of women to infant mortality 
seems well established, though there must be other important factors in 
the problem. In Bradford the mortality of children under 1 year is 160 
per 1000 among working mothers, as compared with 40.8 per 1000 among 
those of mothers who are not working. (Page 77.) 

The higher death rate of infants whose mothers are employed in in- 
dustrial work may be ascribed broadly to two general causes, (1) prenatal 
conditions and (2) neglect after birth. Where mothers work unfavorable 
prenatal conditions are nearly constant from year to year, but neglect 
after birth causes deaths to fluctuate accordingly as the season is more or 
less favorable for the survival of infants receiving improper care. In 
Dundee the deaths within a week of birth are very large, and those due to 
"immaturity" are more frequent than in cities where fewer mothers work. 
"It is impossible to apportion the cases of immaturity to definite causes, 
but it may be broadly stated that premature birth and other causes of 
death classified with it under the head of immaturity are due to congenital 
weakness in the infant, and this congenital weakness it is usual to attribute 
to prenatal causes." One of the leading English experts reports: "The 
effects of poverty and hard work while the child is being formed in the 
womb do undoubtedly have the efi'ect of producing weakly children, who 
either grow up weakly or die." 

The first phase of material neglect, after the child is born, forced upon 
the mother by the necessity of working in a factory, is the cessation of 
breast feeding. And the relative mortality of infants not fed at the breast 
appears to be higher in case of women engaged in industrial work, even 
in their homes, than in case of other mothers. (Pages 78, 79.) 

Yet even the most enthusiastic social reformers do not call for amend- 
ments to the law to prevent women — or even to prevent mothers — from 



UNITED 
STATES 



276 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



working in factories. This employment is recognized as an economic 
necessity for the working people at present. It is a condition that it 
would be far better for a country never to reach — even at the expense of 
less wealth and so-called industrial progress — but once incurred it can 
not be remedied abruptly. However, amendments forbidding the em- 
ployment of mothers immediately before and for two or three months 
after childbirth, combined if necessary with temporary pensions to work- 
ing mothers, to carry them over this critical period, are advocated by men 
who would not be called extremists. Meanwhile the municipal authori- 
ties, through their lady health visitors and private associations, are doing 
something to meet the worst evils arising from these causes. (Page 81.) 



(6) Race Degeneration 

Deterioration of any large portion of the population 
inevitably lowers the entire community, physically, men- 
tally, and morally. In communities where excessive work- 
ing hours have long prevailed, one generation after another 
has suffered from overwork, inherited weakness, and the 
loss of all family decencies, until actual race degeneration 
has resulted. Progressive decline in stature, strength, 
and efficiency becomes markedly evident. This is conspicu- 
ously shown by the large percentage of persons necessarily 
excluded from military service for physical unfitness. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 73. 1844. 

Lord Ashley: 

By the system we permit, the laws of nature are absolutely outraged, 
but not with impunity. The slow but certain penalty is exacted in the 
physical degradation of the human race, including, as it does, the ruin of 
the body, and the still more fatal corruption of the moral part. (Page 
1086.) 

Mr. M. Geachy: 

On one Member of the Government, at last a Ten Hours' Bill has an 
hereditary claim. Five-and-twenty years ago the first Sir Robert Peel 
said before a Committee of the House of Commons in speaking of a Ten 
Hours' Bill: 

"Such an unlimited and indiscriminate employment of the poor con- 



RACE DEGENERATION 277 

sisting of a great proportion of the inhabitants of the trading districts, great 
will be attended with effects to the rising generation, so ruinous and alarm- ^^"^^^^ 
ing, that I cannot contemplate them without dismay, and thus the great 
effort of British ingenuity, whereby the machinery of our manufactures has 
been brought to such perfection, instead of being a blessing to the nation, 
will be converted into the bitterest curse." (Page 1217.) 

Mr. C. Buller: 

In Wiltshire the average duration of life was 33 years, m Manchester 
it was only 17. . . . Now, it could not be doubted that the evils of this 
physical condition were calculated to grow worse in every succeeding gen- 
eration. A people whose life was reduced to one half of the usual average 
of the labouring class by no accident, no sudden disaster, no chance epi- 
demic, but by the constant action of circumstances unfavorable to health 
and longevity, were not likely to propagate a vigorous and healthy race. 
He thought that no legislature could view with indifference a state of 
things that thus shortened human life, and tended to deteriorate the 
species. (Page 1435.) 

Hansard's Parliamentary Delates. Vol. 74. 1844. 

Sir R. Peel: 

Mr. John Moor, surgeon, stated, unless something was done to im- 
prove the condition of the factory workers, the rising generations in the 
manufacturing districts would be debilitated more than the present, and 
so generation would go on until the human species would be everything 
but extinguished. As a medical man of 40 years' standing in the town of 
Bolton, he had no hesitation in making this declaration. The ravages 
which, in his capacity of surgeon, he had witnessed from scrofula and 
other diseases, consequent upon confinement to the mills, had been so 
disastrous that he did not hesitate to say that if the system of confinement 
in mills for so long a period each day was continued much longer, there 
would be but few engaged in factory labour who would escape deformity. 
In many cases which came under his own knowledge, inflammation of the 
feet and legs ensued, which had to be followed by amputation. From 
these and many other considerations, he was decidedly of opinion that 10 
hours' labour in factories was even more than could be endured without 
injury to the human constitution. (Page 679.) 

One other of his (Lord Ashley's) statements . . . had been called 
in question. He had made it on the authority of a medical man in Lanca- 
shire, that long protracted labour had a most injurious efi'ect, especially 
in cases of pregnancy, that varicose veins had formed and bursting, ended 
in death. (Page 679.) 



278 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1870. Reports of Inspectors of Factories. 

BRITAIN 

This condition of the factory population has . . . been brought under 
my notice by one of my certifying surgeons. . . . Dr. Ferguson writes thus: 

"Within my short experience ... I see a marked degeneration in the 
height and general development of children presented for examination, 
especially in those of 18 years and upwards, and have had to reject during 
the last 2 years more than 200, because those coming to pass had not more 
than the average strength and appearance of 11 years. I attribute this 
degeneration mainly to the intemperate and improvident habits which 
prevail extensively amongst the parents. Boys of 15 and 16 years old 
come before me almost every week, not having more than the average 
height and development of 13 years, their lips pale and the muscles flabby. 
1 fear drunkenness is on the increase among factory hands, especially 
among the women." . . . (Pages 156, 157.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1875. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories. For half-year ending 30th April, 1875. 

It was during this period that the factory hand became changed from 
the healthy labourer to the weakly, anaemic, and frequently decrepit 
operative. Doubtless, from the cost of the introduction of steam, and 
the desire to run the machinery as long as possible, the factory hands did 
degenerate from the sturdy labourer and operative in the valleys and on 
the hill sides of Lancashire and Yorkshire to the wasted and down-trodden 
operative of the purely manufacturing town, working daily and all day 
long, and possibly part of the night also, in a close, hot, ill-ventilated 
factory, returning from work to a dwelling more unhealthy than the fac- 
tory, until the factory population appeared to have become a distinct 
race, that was known at a glance, so defined had the effects of overwork 
and unhealthy dwellings become upon the physical appearance and con- 
dition of the people. (Page 23.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1876. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories. For half-year ending 31st Oct., 1875. 

Testimony of certifying surgeon : 

No doubt height is not so much affected as physique, although con- 
trasted with an agricultural population, height is perceptibly less in the 
factory population. The physical strength and appearance suffer much 
in factories from confined heated atmospheres, loaded with fine cotton 
fibres, fine flinty sand, and cutaneous exhalations. The number of gas- 



BRITAIN 



RACE DEGENERATION 279 

lights, each light destroying oxygen equal to one man, and transitions great 
from the mills and their temperatures to their dwellings. Diet and drinks 
adapted to a heated employment and stimulants to sooth an excited nerv- 
ous tension. In short the skin secretes the quantity of an Indian climate. 
Vision is always on the move. Perception and volition, from the nature 
of their work, always in action. The weight of liquid thrown off from the 
skin is compensated by drinks of tea, coffee, and water. The very tension 
caused by their work is best allayed after hours of labour by resources 
always at hand. But unfortunately, drink stimulants and mental excite- 
ment are resorted to, and want, improvidence, the poorest houses, and 
bad food tell against healthy offspring. (Page 103.) 

Transactions of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science. 
1857. Vol. I. The Early Closing Movement. John Lilwall. 
London, John Parker, 1858. 

Mr. Stevens, of St. Luke's Lunatic Asylum, observes: It may be stated 
with great confidence that a prolific cause for the rapid and extensive 
increase of insanity in this country is to be found in the unceasing toil and 
anxiety to which the working classes are subjected. This cause develop- 
ing the disease in the existing generation, or what is quite as frequently 
the case, transmitting to the offspring idiocy, insanity, or some imper- 
fectly developed sensorium or nervous system. The agitated, over- 
worked, and harassed parent is not in a condition to transmit a healthy 
brain to his child. (Pages 554-555.) 



A Shorter Working Day. R. A. Hadfield of Hadjield's Steel Foundry Co., 
Sheffield, and H. de B. Gibbins, M.A. London, Methuen, 1892. 

Those who have studied the history of the Factory Acts are simply 
aghast at the fearful conditions of labor therein disclosed and at the same 
time amazed at the endurance of which the workers of that day were 
capable. The penalty has been paid by their descendants, as those who 
live in the factory districts can testify. (Page 88.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited hy Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

It may be enough for the individual employer if his workpeople re- 
main alive during the period for which he hires them. But for the con- 
tinued efficiency of the nation's industry, it is indispensable that its 



28o 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



citizens should not merely continue to exist for a few months or years, but 
should be well brought up as children, and maintained for their full 
normal life unimpaired in health, strength, and character. The human 
beings of a community form as truly a portion of its working capital as its 
land, its machinery, or its cattle. If the employers in a particular trade 
are able to take such advantage of the necessities of their workpeople as 
to hire them for wages actually insufficient to provide enough food, cloth- 
ing, and shelter to maintain them and their children in health; if they are 
able to work them for hours so long as to deprive them of adequate rest 
and recreation; or if they subject them to conditions so dangerous or in- 
sanitary as positively to shorten their lives, that trade is clearly using up 
and destroying a part of the nation's working capital. (Pages 20-21.) 

. . . Industries yielding only a bare minimum of momentary sub- 
sistence are therefore not really self-supporting. In deteriorating the 
physique, intelligence, and character of their operatives, they are drawing 
on the capital stock of the nation. And even if the using up is not actually 
so rapid as to prevent the "sweated" workers from producing anew gen- 
eration to replace them, the trade is none the less parasitic. In persist- 
ently deteriorating the stock it employs, it is subtly draining away the 
vital energy of the community. It is taking from these workers, week by 
week, more than its wages can restore to them. A whole community 
might conceivably thus become parasitic on itself, or, rather, upon its 
future. (Page 22.) 



FRANCE Dehats et Documents Parlementaires, Chambre des Deputes, 23^ Mars, 

1881. [Parliamentary Debates and Documents. {French) Chamber of 
Deputies, Mar. 23, 1881.] Suite de la discussion des propositions de 
hi concernant la duree des heures de travail dans les usines et les manu- 
factures. [Discussion of the sections of the law relating to the length of 
hours of work in workshops and factories.] 

Senator Waddington (quoting M. Vanzuppe, a cotton-spinner, who 
said): 

What is the inevitable result of the silence of the law as to a generally 
efficacious restrictive regulation of the hours of labor, settled in accordance 
with human strength? 

It is: higher mortality; decreased birthrate; physical and moral 
degeneration of the industrial masses; 

It is: in the last analysis, the loss of many whose intelligence and 
whose robust arms might have well served the state. 

An industrial population tends to destroy itself, and the immigrant 



RACE DEGENERATION 281 

must be looked to to fill the vacant places created by our industrial france 
system. 

The foundation of free citizenship is education, but by a bitter irony 
the workers are deprived of the facilities for obtaining it. Exhausted by 
excessive labor, can they read, or study? (Page 618.) 

Tenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Paris, 1900. 
In one vol. Legislation et Reglementation du Travail au point de Vue 
de V Hygiene. [Labor Legislation and Restriction from the Standpoint 
of Hygiene.] M. Edouard Vaillant, M. R. C. S. Engl. Paris, 
Masson et Cie, 1900. 

The insufficiency of labor legislation is plain before our eyes: at 40 or 
45 years the laborer, used up by overwork, is unfit for the shop. He went 
to work too soon; his growth was checked; his organism was enfeebled, 
and he is replaced in his work by his puny children, destined to a fate like 
his own. 

Misery and degeneration of a modern type appear with modern ma- 
chines of industry and with the employment of women and children. 
The different industrial countries, feeling their strength sapped at its 
sources, have sought counsel from hygiene. This is the origin of the 
earliest protective laws for children, then those for the adolescent and the 
woman. 

In less than a half century the evil has made frightful progress. 

Lack of health, depression, and degeneracy have followed upon 
physiological poverty resulting from overwork and under nutrition. 

Since the end of the last century the testimony of historians, travel- 
lers . . . and medico-hygienists has been uniform on this question. 
With the introduction of machinery and of the factory, displacing hand- 
work, methods of work have been transformed. Daylight no longer 
limits the working day. Artificial light allows the longest possible use of 
motor devices, and these are attended by an army of women and children. 
(Page 503.) 



Verhandlungen des Deutschen Reichstags. 103. Sit^ung, 18. April. 1891. 
[Proceedings of the German Reichstag. 103rd Session. April 18th, 
1891.] 

Representative Bebel: 

The vast change in social and family life which is portended by the 
increasing pressure of women into industry has been strongly emphasized 



GERMANY 



282 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY . . . there can be no doubt that the physique of the woman is not adapted 
to the same degree of muscular exertion and development as the man's. 
That the sound and healthy development of the race depends in large 
measure upon the strength and health of the mother is acknowledged, and 
no one can deny that the health of women to-day is seriously endangered 
by factory work. The one fact alone, that the military recruiting offices 
all over Germany have found that from decade to decade the number of 
physically fit recruits in factory and manufacturing districts is diminishing 
to an appalling extent, so that it is necessary to draw more and more 
heavily upon the country regions — shows clear and plainly what kind of 
process is at work upon the development of the national physique, and 
the more extensive our industry becomes, and the more it invades the 
country regions, the more and more certainly will it exhaust those sources 
of strength which are now the only sources to look to for military defence. 
For these reasons it is absolutely essential that the laws should promptly 
provide ample means for overcoming this tendency to deterioration of 
race in every way. (Pages 2419-2420.) 

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-AufsichtS' 
heamten. 1897. [Official Information from Reports of the {German) 
Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1898. 

It is repeatedly shown in the reports that in certain branches of in- 
dustry in specific regions the working classes deteriorate in health from 
one generation to another, as they become hereditarily more predisposed 
to fall victims to the special injuries induced by their calling. Certain 
work is regarded as an inherited occupation, even though its unwhole- 
some effect is known and though the bad health of whole families engaged 
therein becomes ever more clearly evident. (Page 208.) 

Of first importance is it to shorten the hours of work. (Inspector in 
Potsdam.) (Page 210.) 

Die Sociale Reform als Gebot des IVirthschaftlichen Forts chrittes. [Social 
Reform as a Condition of Socio- Political Progress.] Dr. Heinrich 
Herkner. Leipzig, Duncker, 1891. 

The results of excessive work, insufficient wages and deficient nutrition 
appear with a distinctness that cannot be ignored in the reports of the 
recruiting statistics. A military examining physician of the empire 
(German) reported from a factory region: "In the factory villages, where 
every one works from 3^outh up in the factories, almost all recruits were 



RACE DEGENERATION 283 

unfit for service, and I believe that, if this goes on, it will be useless to send Germany 
recruiting commissions to these communities." (Page 4.) (Quoted from 
Archiv fiir offentliche Gesundheitspflege in Elsass-Lothringen, VII, 107.) 

Hours and Wages in Relation to Production. Lujo Brenta^io. Translated 
by Mrs. William Arnold. London, Sonnenschein, 1894. 

It was said — that machinery had made labour easy which had been 
arduous; that it even rendered possible the employment of little children 
where formerly grown-up people had been indispensable; and that as the 
work was no longer arduous, a prolongation of working days could do no 
harm. The actual consequence of this easier but longer labour was a 
complete deterioration of the working classes, physically, mentally, and 
morally — especially of the women and children whose labour replaced 
that of male adults. "And so it came to pass," to use the words of the 
first Sir Robert Peel, "that that great achievement of British ingenuity, 
by means of which factory machinery attained to such perfection, became, 
instead of a blessing to the nation, its bitterest curse." (Pages 21-22.) 

Jahrbuch fiir Gesetigehung, Verwaltung, und Volkswirthschaft im Deutschen 
Reich. Vol. 25^' ^. 1901. Die Wehrfdhigkeit der Idndlichen und 
stddtischen Bevolkerung. [The Arms-Bearing Capacity of Country and 
City Populations.] Dr. George Bindewald. 

It is certain, according to medical testimony, that factory work for 
women, and work behind the counter in shop and store, takes vengeance 
upon the young working woman when she becomes a mother; and not 
only upon her, but even more upon her offspring. 

This is just as certain as that healthy, vigorous mothers who have 
not been subjected to the strain of a struggle for existence, bequeath 
health to their posterity. (Page 188.) 

It is unquestionable that industry cannot be entirely deprived of 
women's work, but, for the sake of a sturdy race, it appears to be a strin- 
gent necessity to restrict such labor to its minimum. (Page 191.) 

The work of women in industry should be limited: this may be done 
chiefly by reducing the length of the working hours, and also by lengthen- 
ing the periods of rest at the time of childbirth. (Page 192.) 

Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. I. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 
[Compendium of Political Science, Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, 
Professor of Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Oher Reg. Rath in 



284 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Berlin; W. Lexis, Professor of Political Science in Gottingen, and Edg. 

LoENiNG, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. 

The state approaches the question of working time from another stand- 
point than does the church. The state is above all the organ of perception 
of national interests. The bedrock of national strength is an able, loyal, 
intelligent people. It is therefore important for the state to see that this 
foundation is not shattered by the prolongation of working hours. First 
of all, the fatal influence of excessive hours of work came to light in the 
inferior military fitness of the factory population. After that it was only 
in obedience to the most elementary law of self-preservation that states 
regulated the hours of work of the least resistant classes, the children, 
young people, and women. According as the proportion of the industrial 
classes to the whole community is larger, so much more urgently necessary 
does it become to lessen the serious dangers to health which inhere in 
industrial as opposed to agricultural occupations, by a wise limitation 
of the hours of work. 

The state needs not only soldiers, but citizens capable and ready to 
share in public life. Wage-earning must leave some time free for such 
duties. (Page 1206.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Massachusetts House Documents, 
limitation of hours of work. 



No. 153. 1850. Minority report re 



They fully believe and think that nearly all intelligent persons, who 
have thought upon the subject, will admit that the present hours of labor 
in the manufactories of this State, are too many, for the moral welfare and 
physical health of the operatives, and that this system of labor is a great 
evil, which, not only immediately affects the laborers themselves, but is 
diffused into society, and will entail serious effects upon posterity. (Page 6.) 



Evidence Submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- 
ment of a Ten-Hour Law. Lawrence, 1870. 

I have observed with regret the premature decay of the youth of our 
city, who are confined, long hours, in an unhealthy atmosphere in our 
mills, and believe that disease is being nourished in our organisms for an 
ultimate weakened and miserable race. I believe the cause of humanity 
demands redress in the matter of time, — the young and female portion 
of the community, at least, are to be confined in our mills, if we desire a 
healthy and happy community. Isaac Smith, Jr., M.D. (Page 18.) 



RACE DEGENERATION 285 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1871. united 

STATES 

14. Progressive physical deterioration produced by family labor in 
factories. It is well known that like begets like, and if the parents are 
feeble in constitution, the children must also inevitably be feeble. Hence, 
among that class of people, you find many puny, sickly, partly developed 
children; every generation growing more and more so. 

15. Connection between continuous factory labor and premature old 
age. It is a fact, patent to every one, that premature old age is fully 
developed, in consequence of long hours of labor and close confinement. 
Very few live to be old that work in a factory. (Page 507.) 

Massachusetts Senate Documents. No. 33. 1874. 

The Committee on the Labor Question to whom was referred so much 
of the Governor's address as relates to Labor Reform, having considered 
so much thereof as pertains to the enactment of a ten-hour law, and having 
also considered the petition of Wendell Phillips and others for the passage 
of such a law. Report: That the advocates of a reduction of the present 
hours of labor in textile manufactories claim, and produce evidence to 
show, that ten hours is as long as females or children should be required, 
or allowed, to work in the close confinement of the mills, if the Common- 
wealth has any interest in insuring a healthy and intelligent posterity. 
(Page 1.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission, Final Report. Vol. 
XIX, 1902. 

Factory life brings incidentally new and depressing efi"ects, which those 
whose experience has been wholly agricultural do not appreciate. But 
the experience of States which have pushed their way from agricultural 
to manufacturing industries, and have found that their delay in protecting 
their factory employees has weakened the physical and moral strength of 
the new generation of working people, would seem to be an experience 
which the citizens of new manufacturing States should hope to avoid. 
(Page 788.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1903- 
1904. 

In certain fields of industry, like the manufacture of cotton goods or 
hosiery and knit goods, we may find the establishments paying the lowest 



286 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED wages, working their employees the longest hours, and under the worst 

sanitary conditions, temporarily drivmg out of the field of competition 
those establishments paying the best wages, working their employees a 
reasonable length of time surrounded by the best sanitary conditions; 
but if the process is allowed to continue, the nation tolerating it will 
certainly revert to a state of discontent, poverty, and crime, which no 
agency or force can overcome so well as wise factory legislation strictly 
and judiciously enforced. (Page 137.) 

Besides this many eminent students of social conditions maintain that 
in countries where industries have been allowed to run for centuries 
without any form of regulation, pauperism and crime are more prevalent 
than in those countries where regulation exists. Also, in countries where 
regulations have been imposed and withdrawn, misery and want have 
risen and fallen in almost direct proportion to the imposition and with- 
drawal of such regulation, and poor relief has ebbed and flowed in almost 
the same proportion. (Pages 140-141.) 

Popular Science Monthly. Vol. XXIV. 1884. New York, Appleton, 
1884. Female Education from a Medical Point of View. Lecture 
delivered at the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh. J. S. Clous- 
ton, M.D. 

There is another vital fact in the constitution of human nature that 
needs to be taken into account. ... It is this, that one generation may, 
by living at high pressure, or under specially unfavorable conditions, 
exhaust and use up more than its share of energy. That is, one may 
draw a bill on posterity and transmit to the next generation not enough 
to pay for it. I believe many of us are having the benefit of the calm, 
unexciting, lazy lives of our forefathers of the last generation. They 
stored up energy for us; now we are using it. The question is, can we 
begin at adolescence, work at high pressure, keep this up during our lives 
(which in that case will be on an average rather short), and yet transmit 
to our posterity enough vital energy for their needs? (Page 218.) 



II. BENEFITS OF SHORT HOURS 

A. Good Effect on Morals: Growth of Temperance 

The good effect of shorter working hours on the use of 
leisure is conspicuously shown in the growth of temperance 



BENEFITS OF SHORT HOURS TO MORALS 287 

where working hours have been reduced. With better health 
and a higher moral tone due to the shorter working day, 
temperance in the use of stimulants results automatically. 

United States Congress, House Report No. 1793 (4405). Hours of Laborers gJ^^ED 
on Public Works of the U. S. Report from the Committee on Labor, 
57th Congress, 1st Session, 1901-1902. 

It is contended by the advocates of the shorter day that the additional 
leisure given to labor in every instance of the shortening of the work day, 
as it has been shortened step by step from sixteen hours to fourteen, twelve, 
eleven, ten, nine, and in many instances eight, has resulted in a decrease 
of intemperance among laborers, the acquirement of better taste and 
new and better desires, resulting in better homes, greater domestic 
felicity, and higher degree of intelligence with an increase of laudable 
pride as to the clothing of themselves and those dependent upon them. 
In a word, has increased their interests in home and better social relations, 
raising their moral status, and has made them much better consumers of 
the products of labor, and hence resulted in increased production. 

The proposition that without variation the elimination of intem- 
perance, poverty, pauperism, ignorance, crime and their accompanying 
evils move parallel with and proportionate to the increase of the social 
opportunities of the laboring class stands without impeachment of its 
historical accuracy. (Page 8.) 

National Civic Federation Review. Vol. J, No. 7. Sept., 1904. IVill 
Labor Make Concessions for a Shorter Work-Day? Answers to Ques- 
tion: Do you believe that a shorter work-day lessens production or in- 
creases the labor cost of production? 

Thomas M. Nolan, Editor of the Union Label Magazine, Boston: 
. . . Another important pomt is that the general morale of the craft 
has advanced as the hours have decreased. Temperance, morality, and a 
general uplifting tendency has been observed to a greater extent among 
the rank and file of the printing crafts. (Page 7.) 

The National Civic Federation Review. Vol. II, No. 8. Jan.-Feb., 1906. 
The first annual meeting of the New England Civic Federation, Boston, 
Jan. 11, 1906. 

James Duncan, of Quincy, General Secretary of the Granite Cutters' 
International Union: 



288 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



You may take any locality in this or any other country where the hours 
of labor have changed from ten to nine, or nine to eight, and I say that 
temperance has increased in accordance with that reduction. I had the 
honor to speak in a meeting in Georgia a short time ago, where the mayor 
of the town was the presiding officer, and he told me when he first became 
a municipal officer a great part of the revenue of the town came from fmes 
for drunkenness and disorderly conduct of the working people of the vi- 
cmity. The granite industry, with which I am proud to be connected, 
became busy in that locality, and we began the agitation for the shorter 
work day. The mayor told me that after we had introduced the eight- 
hour day — and we were successful, and the other trades working nine 
hours were afterwards reduced to eight — disorderly conduct and intem- 
perance became so little known in the community that the town had to 
look for taxation in other directions than the saloons in order to meet its 
necessary expenses. (Page 9.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. LXXIV. 1844. 

Lord Ashley: 

Your own inspectors have told you that without such a limitation of 
the hours of toil there can be no hopes of the social or moral improvement 
of the working classes. (Page 912.) 



British Sessional Papers. 
Factories. 



Vol. XXV. 1845. Reports of Inspectors of 



All the Sub-Inspectors in my district concur with me in bearing testi- 
mony to the important fact that the reduction in the hours of labour, 
both of women and children, has commended itself to many who had 
previously entertained doubts as to its expediency and practicability. 

It is impossible to estimate too highly the moral and social advantages 
which result from these two amendments of the law; and none but those 
who have witnessed the proceedings to which the former license to employ 
women long hours and all night gave rise . . . can fully appreciate the 
simple provisions that now protect both classes. (Page 40.) 



British Sessional Papers, 
of Factories. 



Vol. XXVI. 1847-8. Reports of Inspectors 



It has, on many occasions, been stated to me by masters, that they 
consider 12 hours' work more than is consistent with the welfare and a 



BENEFITS OF SHORT HOURS TO MORALS 



289 



desirable social condition of their people; that a reduction of 1 hour a day 
would have effected a great improvement; and that although it would 
have occasioned a reduction of income both to the employers and the 
employed, it would not have been to such an amount as to be felt to be 
too great a sacrifice for the object by either party. ... I have recently 
had a letter from the proprietor of one of the largest cotton mills in my 
district ... in which he says, "I think that there are evident general 
indications that the shortening of the hours of labour in factories will 
prove to be a great moral benefit to our laboring classes." (Pages 3-4.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



The Case of the Journeymen Bakers. Evils of Night-work and Long Hours 
of IVork. William Augustus Guy, M.B., Fellow of the Royal College 
of Physicians, Professor of Forensic Medicine, Kings College; Physi- 
cian to King's College Hospital, etc. London, Renshaw, 1848. 

Health on the other hand, like cleanliness, is an ally of virtue and 
sobriety. It is favourable to self-control, and to quiet and rational en- 
joyments. It has the same effect on the mind as it has on the palate; it 
enables it to relish plain and homely fare, and to dispense with unwhole- 
some stimulants. By abolishing nightwork, and shortening your hours 
of labour, you would be placed in possession, not merely of new faculties 
of enjoyment, but of time to use them. (Pages 12-13.) 



Eight Hours for Work. John Rae. London, Mac millan, 1894. 

(West Cumberland blast furnaces, experiment tried.) There seems 
to be every reason to expect better results next year, because the men 
were showing decisive signs of both physical and moral improvement. 
Their temperance societies had increased in membership 50 per cent during 
the year, and the provident and trade societies had spent 20 or 25 per cent 
less on sick allowances, both results being attributed to the relief from the 
undue fatigue from which all had suffered before. (Page 92.) 



Archives Generales de Medecine. 
[The Eight Hour Day.] Dr. 



/. 1906. La Journee de Huit Heures. 
P. CoRNEiLLE. Paris, 1906. 



Data obtainable in West Cumberland, England, as to the results of 
the 8 hour day show that temperance has gained 50 per cent and that 
mutual aid societies spent from 20 to 25 per cent less in sick pay. 

The gasworks in London say: 
19* 



FRANCE 



290 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE Drunkenness used to be the rule. . . . The worklngmen are sober since 

we have the 8 hour day. 

The same reports come from Konigsberg, in Germany, and from May- 
ence. (Page 1199.) 



B. Good Effect on General Welfare 
(1) General Benefit to Society 

History, which has illustrated the deterioration due to 
long hours, bears witness no less clearly to the regeneration 
due to the shorter working day. To the individual and 
society alike, shorter hours have been a benefit wherever 
introduced. Wherever sufficient time has elapsed since the 
establishment of the shorter working day, the succeeding 
generation has shown extraordinary improvement in phy- 
sique and morals. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XXXIV. 1860. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories. For Half-year ending 31st October, 1859. 



I think I can show that the Factory Acts have put an end to the prema- 
ture decrepitude of the former long-hour workers, that they have enlarged 
their social and intellectual privileges, that by making them masters of 
their own time they have given them a moral energy which is directing 
them to the eventual possession of political power, and that they have 
lifted them up high in the scale of rational beings, compared with that 
which they had attained in 1833, moreover I think I can further prove 
that all this has been accomplished without any prejudice whatever to our 
commercial prosperity, as it was asserted there would be; that wages have 
not been diminished. (Page 47.) 

There were in 1833 at least 20Q,000 females employed within the 
factories of the limited kingdom. "They were," says Mr. Smith, the 
eminent surgeon of Leeds, writing on this subject in August last, "a poor, 
emaciated and down-hearted looking race, with angular shoulders and 
stooping heads, and altogether destitute of the rounded form of healthy 
women." There are now 400,000, and they are "fair and florid, stout and 
muscular, cheerful and happy, and all the outlines are admirable." Such 
is the concurrent testimony of nine of the certifying surgeons who certify 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 29I 

for mills which employ 70,000 persons in the various branches of textile great 

BRITAIN 

labor, of whom 40,000 are women and children. (Pages 48-49.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories. For Half-year ending 31st Oct., 1868. 

The physical condition of the operative classes has, from the shortening 
of the hours of labour, and from other causes, been greatly ameliorated. 
(Page 30.) 

Undoubtedly the Textile Factory Acts embodied in the Act of 1867, 
notwithstanding their previous success in the textile districts, have been 
put upon their trial; nor can we be surprised that a question should have 
arisen in many minds whether Acts originally for textile works only would 
be found adequate for every trade, so as to bring all under one form of 
discipline ... it was scarcely possible but that fictile and metallurgic 
trades should possess constitutional elements widely different from those 
of textile trades; the habits of the people being also different, their in- 
dulgences different, their expenditure different, themselves not yet accus- 
tomed to compulsion of any kind, and open only to the slowest and most 
careful approaches. 

That it has met and conquered most of these and many such obstacles 
so remarkably ... is a sufficient proof of the soundness of this kind of 
legislation. . . . Take, for example, the thousand and one trades carried 
on in such a place as Birmingham, where the domestic habits of the work- 
ers in respect of their employments, their general arrangements and 
associations, their laissez aller, had all been uncontrolled by any legal 
discipline down to the 1st of January, 1868, . . . where so many married 
women were and are yet employed away from their homes and families, 
and where the custom of leaving all social comforts to chance or oppor- 
tunity had become perpetual rather than accidental, and the difficulty of 
entering on a contest with such habits, or of attempting to persuade all 
the persons whose feelings and interests were to be affected by that change 
that it would be far better for their physical and moral health than here- 
tofore, and that their longevity, as well as their social comforts, depended 
on a regard to sanitary laws which had never hitherto been respected by 
them, may be imagined. What prejudices to overcome! . . . And yet, 
I have little doubt but time will show . . . masters as well as workers 
wondering how they ever formerly submitted to long hours, now that they 
can rejoice in earlier ones, which have given them the glorious fresh air in 
the summer evenings, and the additional glory of intellect advanced in 
the scientific institutions of the winter. (Pages 83-84.) 



292 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1870. Reports of Inspectors of 

Factories. For Half-year ending 30th April, 1870. 

There is a generous feeling springing up on the part of many employers 
that the act (i. e. 1867) is a proper one; that its enactments are salutary; 
that though it binds them to certain provisions, they are provisions that 
are useful both in a social and business point of view; that long hours 
never produce the best work . . . there is a general improvement in our 
work people, and their habits of life are changed. There are fewer hours 
in the factory, and they have more time at home; besides which, when 
in the factory they are obliged to be clean, quiet, and industrious, and 
these habits tend beneficially on their home life. They are more intelli- 
gent, and it is remarkable that while they work fewer hours they earn 
more money. We have found that longer hours mean listlessness and loss 
of power. (Pages 44-45.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIX-XXX. 1876. Factories and 
fVorkshops Acts Commission. Vol. XXIX. Report. 

Mr. Roberts . . . shows that in the last 40 years there has been a 
general improvement in the physical development of factory children, so 
that at each period of employment they measure 1 inch more round the 
chest than children of the same age did 40 years since. . . . We hope that 
. . . the shortened hours which now prevail in almost every industry 
will show in the course of another generation results as progressive and 
satisfactory as those which have already followed upon the regulation of 
women and employment of children in factories and workshops. (Page 
Ixxii.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 1878. Reports of the Inspectors of 
Factories and Workshops. 

Ten years ago, when I made the first effort to introduce the Factory 
Acts in London, I was frequently met with the statement on the part of 
employers that the tendency of the Act would be to encourage prostitu- 
tion, because by giving the women an enforced leisure they would be 
exposed to additional temptation. I was loath to believe any such theory, 
and I am glad to say that, so far as my experience during the last ten years 
goes, the fears thus expressed have never been realized. There has been 
quite a revolution during that period in the conditions on which seamstress 
work is carried on in the metropolis. The employment of them in work- 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 293 

shops and factories has increased enormously, but I can find no employer great 
wining to commit himself to the opinion that in their respective classes ^^^"^^^^ 
there has been any deterioration in the character and the conduct of the 
workpeople. All the evidence, indeed, which I have obtained goes to 
establish the contrary. (Page 15.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVIII. 1882. Report of Chief In- 
spector of Factories. 

All our experience goes to show that employers prefer moderate hours 
under reasonable restrictions to unlimited labor. Very few employers of 
any class are to be found in occupations under the operation of the Fac- 
tory Act prepared to say they would willingly return to the old system 
. . . those who prophesied the dismissal of young persons from their 
occupation and the substitution of male adult labor acknowledge that 
they were mistaken, and are loud in their acknowledgment of the ad- 
vantages to themselves, as well as their employees, of moderate hours of 
work. (Page 41.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Com- 
mittee on Shop Hours' Regulation Bill. 

Witness, W. Cooke-Taylor, Inspector of Factories: 

3897. What is the result of your observations of the working gen- 
erally now of the Factories as to the health of the young persons and 
women? — I think there is very little doubt the effect of the Acts has been 
to improve the health of young persons and women, and to make their 
lives very much happier. 

3898. And without any corresponding disadvantage to those who 
employ them? — I think that all statistics on the subject and all experience 
show that the corresponding disadvantage has not occurred to all; it 
was supposed that it would occur, but experience has proved that it has 
not. (Page 183.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

In factory legislation there has been steady progress, and whilst Royal 
Commissions and Trade Congresses have commended what has been 
accomplished and the mode of administration of the Factory Acts, they 
have always pointed to further reforms. Bills have been passed which 



294 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT could not have been introduced had not manufacturers, who were formerly 

opponents of such legislation, been convinced of its benefits by the results. 
(Page 5.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

The two great industries which, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, were conspicuous for the worst horrors of sweating were the tex- 
tile manufactures and coal-mining. Between 1830 and 1850 the parlia- 
mentary inquiries into these trades disclosed sickening details of starvation 
wages, incredibly long hours, and conditions of work degrading to decency 
and health. The remedy applied was the substitution, for individual 
bargaining between employer and operative, of a compulsory minimum 
set forth in common rules prescribing standard conditions of employment. 
(Page 36.) 

. . . What was the result? Fortunately, there is no dispute. Every 
one who knows these great industries agrees in declaring that the horrors 
which used to prevail under individual bargaining have been brought to 
an end. The terms "cotton-operative" and "coal-miner," instead of 
denoting typically degraded workers, as they did in 1830, are now used to 
designate the very aristocracy of our labor. And when, to-day, those who 
are interested in the industrial progress of women need an example of a 
free and self-reliant class of female wage-earners, earning full subsistence, 
enjoying adequate leisure, and capable of effective organization, they are 
compelled to turn to the great body of Lancashire cotton-weavers, now 
for half a century "restricted" in every feature of their contract. (Page 
37.) 

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and Amy Harrison. 
Westminster, King, 1903. 

In 1861 the president of the Economic Section of the British Associa- 
tion could say in his address that the results of that bill (ten-hour bill) 
were "something of which all parties might well be proud. There is in 
truth a general assent that if there has been one change which more than 
another has strengthened and consolidated the social fabric in this part 
of the island, has cleared away a mass of depravity and discontent, has 
placed the manufacturing enterprise of the country on a safe basis, and 
has conferred upon us resources against the effects of foreign competitions 
which can scarcely be overvalued, it is precisely the changes which have 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 



295 



been brought about by the sagacious and persevering and successful great 
efforts to establish in manufacturing occupations a sound system of legal 
interference with the hours of labor." (Page 122.) 

Handhuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8\ [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] Germany 
Edited hy Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und 
Fabrikgesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legis- 
lation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

As the experience of every country daily confirms the fact that the 
reduction of working hours neither lessens nor deteriorates the working 
efficiency, nor lowers wages necessarily, there has been in all the civilized 
countries of Europe during the last ten years a steady tendency to shorten 
working hours, — a tendency which cannot be too emphatically encouraged 
in behalf of racial health. (Pages 26-27.) 

Royaume de Belgique, Conseil Superieur du Travail, 9^ Session, 1907 . BELGroM 
[Higher Council of Labor, Belgium, 9th Session, 1907.] Reglementation 
de la Dur'ee du Travail des Adultes. [Regulation of Hours of Work 
for Adults.] Brussels, 1907. 

M. G. Helleputte: 

To assure the workman his weekly rest: to prevent his being . . . 
subjected to excessive daily hours of work which injure his health and 
prematurely lessen his working capacity, — often his only wealth; to 
secure a robust, vigorous, and prosperous population, — this is an attractive 
ideal. From the physical or moral or intellectual view-point alike the 
reduction of the hours of labor can have none but excellent results. (Page 

3.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1870. 

The influence of the ten-hour law in England was to raise the educa- 
tional condition of the laborers, as was at once shown in their increased 
attendance on public lectures, public meetings, mechanics' institutes, 
in the establishment of agricultural and horticultural shows, where were 
exhibited products raised on grounds hired and worked during the time 
thus gained. . . . No greater boon was ever given to a people than this 
ten-hour law, and could a laborer of 20 years before it have come back to 
England, he would be amazed at the improved condition of the working 
people. (Pages 113-114.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



296 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of the Massaclusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1872. 

STATES 

The testimony of those who have adopted the shorter time is almost 
unanimous in its favor. Many reported an improved condition of the 
employees. No instance is given of decreased wages, though many re- 
port an increase, not only in wages, but in production. All of the argu- 
ments against reduction made by those working eleven hours and over are 
answered by those who have adopted the shorter time, and worked under 
that system for years. The advocates of eleven hours have utterly failed 
to sustain themselves in their continued adhesion to a system that Eng- 
land outgrew twenty-two years ago, — a system unworthy of our State 
and nation, and one that would not last a month if the victims of it 
were men instead of women and children, as most of them are. (Page 
240.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. On Results of 
Ten-hour Labor Law in England. 1873. 

Lord Ashley said: "Upon the good moral and social influence of the 
change, the testimony is most favorable from the clergymen and school 
teachers throughout Yorkshire and Lancaster. How have the women 
used their time? Hundreds of them are attending evening school, — 
learning to read and write and to knit and sew, things that they could not 
have learned under the twelve-hour system. 

"A burial society testifies to the diminution of burial although the 
cholera was upon the town, and that the diminution was among children 
under five years of age, and he assumes as a reason that mothers can get 
home earlier and give that attention to children which no hired nurse can 
ensure. 

"The Catholic priests at Stockport and Bolton testify that the number 
of factory workers attending schools has more than doubled, and that 
there was not the slightest doubt that the moral, social, and physical con- 
dition of the people had improved." (Page 492.) 



Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1887-1888, 

The reduction of the number of hours required for a week's work has 
proved to be quite as beneficial to the men and women employed in this 
establishment as was expected. This change . . . "is worth all the 
time, expense, and labor involved in the controversy." (Page 122.) 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 297 

Report of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1888. united 

STATES 

. . . Their main argument (for 10 hours) is . . . that the interests 
of society justify and require the adoption of such regulations as will 
promote the moral, physical, and intellectual development of the laboring 
people, and that the hours of labor of mothers, daughters, sisters, and of 
children generally have a vital bearing on this subject of such deep interest 
to our entire people, and ought to be legally restricted. (Pages 26-27.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Chief of the District Police. 1889. 

The good results of shortening the hours of labor were soon apparent, 
in the substantial disappearance of discontent among those affected 
thereby; in the maintenance of the standard of factory productions, both 
as to quantity and quality; and in placing Massachusetts in the lead, 
where, by her history and her aspiration, she rightfully belonged. 

... If experience has shown anything in this matter, it has been the 
wisdom and statesmanship of the body of laws in our Public Statutes and 
additions thereto, which are known as industrial legislation. It is sixteen 
years since the ten-hour law was enacted; and it is entirely safe to say 
that, if it were stricken from the statutes to-day, not an influential voice 
would be raised within our borders in favor of the restoration of the order 
of things which that law changed. The increase of public interest in 
matters of this kind is a very significant fact. (Page 7.) 

Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1890. 

The agitation for shorter hours of labor, for improvement in the sani- 
tary condition of factories and workshops, the restriction of child and 
women's labor are evidence of a tendency to improve their surroundings 
and to mitigate some of the evils which have grown up under our changing 
methods of production. (Page 364.) 

The utility of State interference is well shown in the operation of the 
laws to restrict the employment of children and to regulate the work hours 
of women and young persons in factories and workshops, now in operation 
in nearly every State and industrial country in the world, and very gen- 
erally regarded as among the wisest and most humane acts of modern 
legislation. (Page 366.) 

Report of the Illinois Factory Inspectors. 1895. 

In France, Germany, and every other continental country, and in the 
more progressive States of this country, legislative regulation of the hours 
of labor has been found an effective measure for the protection of the 



298 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED health of the women and children employed in factories and workshops. 

STATES /r> r \ 

(Page 5.) 

I n England the principle of the regulation of the hours of work of women 
and children has been established for more than a generation; and the 
regeneration of the working class in that country, from the degradation 
in which it was sunk in 1844, is attributed to the Factory Acts, and es- 
pecially to this essential feature of them. (Page 5.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

But the good accomplished by each successive factory law was so 
clearly apparent, that even capitalistic Parliament could not refuse to 
continue the policy of labor protection. The evidence that this policy 
wrought a revolutionary change in the amount of crime, pauperism, and 
misery is superabundant; but it is too familiar to warrant repetition now. 
(Page 49.) 

The best evidence of the overwhelming success of the short-hour law 
from all points of view is afforded by the complete conversion of its oppo- 
nents. Thus it came to pass that in 1860, when a bill was introduced to 
extend the ten-hour law to other branches of the textile industry, J. A. 
Roebuck, who had originally opposed with bitterness this kind of legis- 
lation, made the following recantation: 

" I am about to speak on this question under somewhat peculiar cir- 
cumstances. Very early in my parliamentary career Lord Ashley, now 
the Earl of Shaftesbury, introduced a bill of this description. I, being 
an ardent political economist, as I am now, opposed the measure, . . . 
and was very much influenced in my opposition by what the gentlemen of 
Lancashire said. They declared that it was the last half-hour of the work 
performed by their operatives which made all their profits, and that if we 
took away that last half-hour we should ruin the manufacturers of Eng- 
land. I listened to that statement and trembled for the manufacturers 
of England [a laugh]; but Lord Ashley persevered. Parliament passed 
the bill which he brought in. From that time down to the present the 
factories of this country have been under State control, and I appeal to 
this House whether the manufacturers of England have suffered by this 
legislation." (Page 50.) 

Sir James Graham, another persistent antagonist of the short-hour 
laws, followed Mr. Roebuck with a similar recantation: 

" I am sorry once more to be involved in a short -time discussion. I 
have, however, a confession to make to the House. . . . Experience has 
shown to my satisfaction that many of the predictions formerly made 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 299 

against the factory bill have not been verified by the result, as, on the united 

• • STATES 

whole, that great measure of relief for women and children has contributed 
to the well-being and comfort of the working classes, while it has not in- 
jured their masters. The enactment of the present bill ought to approach 
as nearly as possible the Factory Act. ... By the vote I shall give to- 
night, I will endeavor to make some amends for the course I pursued in 
earlier life in opposing the factory bill." (Page 51.) 

All travellers unite in testifying to the wonderful energy displayed in 
their work by the wage-earners of Australia. Such energy is a product 
not so much of the stimulating climate as the high standard of comfort 
made possible by the short working-day. Considerable evidence might 
be adduced in support of the following enthusiastic opinion of John Rae 
("Eight Hours for Work," page 312.) 

"The more we examine the subject the more irresistibly is the im- 
pression borne in from all sides that there is growing up in Australia, and 
very largely in consequence of the eight-hour day, a working class who for 
general morale, intelligence, and industrial eificiency is probably already 
superior to that of any other branch of our Anglo-Saxon race, and for 
happiness, cheerfulness, and all-around comfort of life has never had its 
equal in the world before." (Page 59.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission. Vol. XIX. 1902. 

Lessening of hours leaves more opportunity and more vigor for the 
betterment of character, the improvement of the home. . . . For these 
reasons the short work-day for working people brings an advantage to 
the entire community. (Page 773.) 



Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1903-1904. 

No private individual has any more moral right to exhaust the working 
energy and working capital of a nation without giving "value received" 
than he has to take the life of an employee outright. The only difference 
is that one is a slower criminal process than the other. It is not enough 
that workmen should obtain barely enough for their labor to enable them 
to live, but they should receive a competency. They should receive as 
much energy from their employers in food, clothing, homes, and furnish- 
ings amid healthful surroundings as they give to their employers in the 
articles they produce. 

The stronger, healthier, and more intelligent a laborer is, the more 
wealth he represents. The laborers of a nation represent its working 



300 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED capital just as the hands of the farmer, his horse, or his ox represent his 

^^^ working capital. And the stronger and healthier either may be, the more 

capital it represents. The more efficient this capital becomes, the more 
wealth will be produced. Machinery operators represent the working 
capital of the manufacturer, and he owes it to the nation which protects 
him in his business to do everything in his power to increase this working 
capital and keep it in the highest possible state of efficiency. (Page 130.) 
The regulation of factories either by law or by special agreement worked 
marvellous changes in England. In the course of half a century the 
"sweated" laborers of this great country whose course of life seemed 
almost run became energetic, self-reliant, intelligent, and efficient workers, 
owning their own homes, amid wholesome surroundings, and working a 
reasonable number of hours for a day's work. 

Not only is factory legislation sound in principle, but wherever put 
to the test it has been found sound in practice as well. (Page 138.) 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Annual Conventions of the International Associa- 
tion of Factory Inspectors of America. Indianapolis, 1900. Niagara 
Falls, 1901. {Bound in New York Department of Labor Report, 1901.) 
Problems of Factory Inspection. The Social Interest of Statistics of 
Factory Inspection. A. F. Weber, Chief Statistician, New York 
State Department of Labor. 

Scarcely any upward movement of the century overshadows in its 
importance to the moral and material welfare of human society, the pro- 
gressive shortening of man's working time. If one country be compared 
with another, it will be found that with hardly an exception the rule holds 
that the shorter the hours of labor, the higher the civilization. (Page 
519.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909. 
Woman and Child IVage-Earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

Because the modern factory system began in Great Britain and, 
together with material blessings, brought social evils, the first factory 
laws were enacted in that country. Since then constant conflict has 
continued between the destructive forces of untrammelled industry, 
sacrificing its servants to its dominant end, production, and the protective 
intervention of society, staying those forces in the interest of humanity. 
This conflict has resulted in a highly developed system of factory legisla- 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO SOCIETY 3OI 

tion, based on over a century of experience. But manv evils still afflict united 

• " • • ■ " STATES 

workers for which remedies remain to be discovered. (Page 1.) 

In Great Britain there is now no such opposition to factory legislation 
as still evidences itself in some parts of America. No employer or repre- 
sentative of employers was heard to criticise the act as a whole, and there 
was but mild objection to any of its details. Undoubtedly among smaller 
works and in the sweatshop districts one might encounter struggling pro- 
prietors competing with large manufacturers under the disadvantage of 
insufficient capital and amid uneconomic conditions, who see in the de- 
mands for modern sanitation and regulated employment extortions that 
foreshadow their own ruin. But these people are few and growing fewer, 
and do not make public opinion outside their class. The great main 
current of thought and sympathy among the mass of the nation, including 
both employers and workers, not only favours present regulations but is 
not averse to extending them. (Page 11.) 

Apart from wages and hours of work, both of which fundamental 
conditions of workers' welfare have improved while the factory acts have 
been in force, and partly on account of them, some less direct and more 
general effects can be traced to these statutes. (Pages 71-72.) 



Employers and Employees. Full Text of the Addresses before the National 
Convention of Employers and Employees. Minneapolis, Minn. 
September 22-25, 1902. The Economic Effects of the Eight-Hours' 
Day. Frank L. McVey, Professor of Political Economy in the 
University of Minnesota. 

The whole tendency of modern industry, even with the shortening of 
hours, is in the direction of increased exertion. The essential element in 
the machine organization is the human one, the most precious and the 
most difficult to replace. The energy of a worker in any industry should 
always be equal to that of the day before. If the pains of labor are heavy 
the tone of the workman is lowered and his surplus energy disappears, 
while he tends to become a mere automaton valuable to society for the 
net surplus he creates for others. The round of production of energy into 
goods, goods into utilities, and utilities into energy, is broken down by 
any such heavy burden. We must therefore hail, certainly from the view- 
point of the community, any movement likely to increase its working 
power. (Page 194.) 

The community desires the highest good and greatest energies of its 
workers through long periods of time. This can be accomplished in 
most industries without any accompanying loss of productive power, by 



UNITED 
STATES 



302 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



shorter hours of work, as has been proven in the experience of many 
industries. 

... In some industries where labor is not employed continuously, 
but periodically and gathered from any and all sources, the employer 
finds it to his advantage to push the hours of work to the longest possible 
limit. Human energies can stand a pace of this kind for a time, and as 
the employer does not worry about a future supply of workers he expects 
to win an increased profit by such a policy. These industries have come 
to be called parasitic. (Page 194.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



(2) Benefit of Leisure and Recreation 

After continuous work, a certain amount of leisure and 
recreation is a physiological necessity. While the over- 
taxed worker is left stupefied or inclined only to coarse 
pleasures after excessive labor, the worker who has not 
exhausted all energies by overexertion turns instinctively 
to a better use of leisure and recreation. License is re- 
placed by ambition for self-improvement or the enjoyment 
of legitimate pleasures which react favorably upon the 
entire organism. Introduction of the shorter working 
day, therefore, raises the standards of the individual and 
the community. 

The Eight-Hours' Movement. Tom Mann. London, William Reeves, 1889. 

Clearly, then, what is required is to develop the mental powers of the 
workers, and to give them leisure and capacity to assimilate knowledge. 
Stupidly slaving away like cattle will not give our country any chance in 
the competition with others. In that struggle, as long as it lasts, the 
victory will be with the nation that has the most energetic, intelligent, 
and capable workers — those, in fact, who work the shortest hours and 
have the highest standard of comfort. (Page 12.) 



The Problem of the Unemployed. 
1896. 



John A. Hobson. London, Methuen, 



The indirect effects of a shorter working-day are not less important. 
Provided the increased leisure is not purchased by an injurious overstrain 



BENEFIT OF LEISURE AND RECREATION 303 

in the shorter working-day the increased opportunities it will afford for great 

• • BRITAIN 

the cultivation of unused faculties and the satisfaction of new tastes, 
will furnish an ever growing stimulus towards an elevation of the standard 
of life. By yielding a continuous demand for the satisfaction of new, 
strong desires it will supply the moral force which, allied with improved 
intelligence and the more effective means of organization which modern 
conditions of industry and of life afford, makes powerfully and persistently 
for enforcing the claims of the working classes to a larger share of the ag- 
gregate consuming power of the community. (Pages 109-110.) 

Diseases of Occupation from the Legislative, Social, and Medical Points of 
View. Thomas Oliver, M.A., M.D., F.R.C.P., Medical Expert on 
the White Lead, Dangerous Trades, Pottery, and Lucifer Match Com- 
mittees of the British Home Office. New York, Dutton, 1908. 

... It is held that no employer has the right to utilize the whole of 
the working part of a man's day, and thus deprive him of the leisure to 
which he as a human being is entitled. Since his whole nature has to be 
developed, it is claimed that the intellectual, moral, and physical powers 
of man cannot be developed if the hours of employment are too long, the 
work too hard and of a grinding nature. (Page xi.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich fViirttemberg GERMANY 
fiir das Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of fViirttemberg for 1902.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1903. 

A reduction of working hours appears to be also needed on moral and 
spiritual grounds. A widespread craving for improved education has in 
recent years developed in the masses of workers and demands satisfaction. 
Likewise the desire for family life has become stronger. (Page 209.) 

The Relation of Labor to the Law of To-day. Translated from the German 
by Porter Sherman. Lujo Brentano. New York, Putnam, 1891. 

Why then does an increase in wages and a decrease in the time of work 
in general lead to a greater capability for work? Because higher wages 
and a shorter day's work make it possible for labourers to increase and 
satisfy their physical and spiritual needs; because better food, more 
careful fostering, greater and more moral recreation increase the power to 
work, and because they increase the pleasure in labor. ... In other 
words, an increase in wages and a decrease in the time of work lead to a 



304 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY greater performance, because they elevate the standard of living of the 
laborer, a higher standard of living necessarily spurs to greater intensity 
of labor, and at the same time makes the same possible. (Pages 233, 234.) 

Handbuch der Arheiterwohlfahrt. Bd. II. [Handbook of the General 
fVelfare of the IVorking Classes, Vol. //.] Edited by Dr. Otto Dam- 
MER. Arbeiterschuti. [The Protection of Working People.] Dr. 
AscHER. Stuttgart, Enke, 1903. 

It is natural that a workman, in the broad sense of the word, who has 
only a short rest period at his command, should chiefly use that in sleep, 
to restore his exhausted physical energy; also natural, that, if he has a 
little free time to spare, as on Sunday, holidays, he should spend it in 
coarse pleasures. Thus results the weariness of Monday, physical and 
brain fatigue. ... If the workman had, instead, enough free time in the 
week to be able to come home to his family without being tired out — to 
read, to hear lectures, work in a garden, and so rebuild and restore bodily 
energy, he would not so misuse the leisure of Sunday. (Page 69.) 

Handworterbuch der Staatswissenschaft. Bd. I. [Compendium of Political 
Science. Vol. I.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of Political 
Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. Lexis, 
Professor of Political Science in Gottingen; and Edg. Loening, Pro- 
fessor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of IVork.] Dr. H. 
Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

3. The workman perceives that high wages can bring him real family 
life, a greater share in the gifts of civilization only when reduced working 
hours shall have enabled him to command some leisure and to retain a 
certain amount of mental buoyancy. For married working women es- 
pecially a moderate working day offers the sine qua non for useful activity 
at home. (Page 1204.) 

5. The shorter the hours of work, the more time there is for other 
opportunities, such as participation in public life, general or technical 
educational courses, and such opportunities are of the greatest value in 
the social position of the worker. (Page 1204.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Evidence Submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- 
ment of a Ten-Hour Law. Lawrence, 1870. 

The workpeople of this State as a body have no desire to disturb in- 
dustrial operations. Their lot is labor; but in toiling for bodily suste- 



BENEFIT OF LEISURE AND RECREATION 3O5 

nance they desire leisure to feed the miitd. The evidence of mill-operatives united 
is confirmatory of the truth that, in their case, physical exhaustion renders ^^^^^^ 
impossible diligent application to mental improvement. (Pages 4-5.) 

Report of Pennsylvania Bureau of Industrial Statistics {being Vol. Ill of 
Pennsylvania Internal Affairs). 1880-1881. 

The agitation of the ten-hour system among the working people of 
this State began as far back as 1834 and 1835, extending through many 
years. The custom of working twelve and thirteen hours per day be- 
came exceedingly obnoxious to the working classes, and great efforts were 
made to prevail upon proprietors to reduce the number of hours to ten 
per day. . . . Injury to health, no time for leisure, recreation, or study, 
a total deprivation of social and innocent pleasure, by an all-work and 
bed system, was the great plea of the laborer, while the stereotyped ob- 
jection of the employer was, that a reduction of the hours would curtail 
production, and thus render them unable to compete with like establish- 
ments in other sections of the country. (Page 100.) 

That ten hours per day is fully as much as should be exacted from the 
employees we think cannot be gainsaid, and such is the spirit of the law, 
as well as the sentiments of all who take an interest in promoting the wel- 
fare of mankind in general and of labor in particular. The justice of 
both law and sentiment becomes more apparent when we contemplate 
the class of labor employed in factories and their relation to future gen- 
erations. To the strong and sturdy male adult the task of being com- 
pelled to labor more than ten hours per day might not seem arduous, more 
especially where the work assigned to him is not of such a character as to 
be a drain upon his physical constitution; but, while this exception may 
possibly be granted, its compulsory exaction from the large number of 
women, girls, and young children employed admits of no excuse. In the 
returns received by the Bureau, the number of women and girls over 
fifteen years of age employed are 23,076; boys under sixteen, 4,183, and 
3,548 girls under fifteen. . . . 

These figures, without special analysis, we presume are sufficient to 
convince the most sceptical of the wisdom of a systematic enforcement of 
the ten-hour law by proper legislation, to the end that youth be protected, 
the condition of life be ameliorated, and the future of our State be pro- 
moted. Nor should the law be confined to factories alone, but extended 
to all industries where women and children are in any manner apt to be 
employed to the. detriment of life and health. (Page 104.) 



306 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and Con- 

STATES 

ditions of Capital and Labor employed in Manufactures and General 
Business. Vol. VII. 1900. 

Testimony of Mr. Rufus R. Wade, Chief of District Police, Massachu- 
setts: 

The question may well be asked, what has been the effect upon those 
operatives whose hours of labor have been lessened and to the children 
obliged to work in factories whose school privileges have been secured? 
The benefit to adults, comprising the laboring classes, by the reduction 
of the hours of labor has been to lift them up in the level of their manhood 
to thoughts of better things and to an organized demand for the same. 
It has given needed time for leisure to the operative, it has encouraged 
self-culture, it has afforded additional opportunity for recreation, and has 
given the debating school, lecture room, and library an impetus in every 
city and manufacturing town in Massachusetts. The large circulation 
which the daily papers have obtained, in my opinion, is due in part to the 
fact that the laboring people are considering the questions of public move- 
ment. 

From an experience which has extended many years, not only through 
the medium of official duty but from personal observation, I would say, 
with much confidence, that there has been a gradual yet steady change in 
the conditions once existing, which has operated to the benefit and well- 
being of the laboring classes in the opportunities for mental and social 
culture. (Pages 79-80.) 

United States Congress. House Report. No. 1793 (4405). Hours of 
Laborers on Public Works of the United States. Report from the Com- 
mittee on Labor. 57th Congress, 1st Session. 1901-1902. 

No recognized authority to-day combats the proposition that the con- 
dition of the laborer has improved with every reduction in the hours of 
daily service that has up to this time been made. Nobody is disputing 
that he has become a better consumer with each reduction. . . . 

Economists contend with great plausibility that the shorter day results 
in an increase of wages without an increase of price, as consumption en- 
larges production, and the larger the scale of production the cheaper the 
given article is produced; that the laborer, when he has the leisure result- 
ing from the shorter hours, has new aspirations, ambitions, and a greater 
personal self-respect, and, as before stated, wants a better house, better 
furniture, better clothes, better food, and becomes a great deal better 
consumer. (Pages 8-9.) 



BENEFIT OF LEISURE AND RECREATION 307 

United States Congress. Senate Report 2321. The Eight-Hour Law: united 
Report from the Committee on Education and Labor. Fifty-seventh STATES 
Congress. Second Session. 1902-1903. 

Commissioner Carroll D. Wright well says: 

The policy of this class of legislation has therefore been settled by Con- 
gress, and I need not discuss this phase of the question. All such laws 
are enacted for the purpose of protecting the laboring man from the in- 
jurious consequences of prolonged physical effort, giving him more time 
for his personal affairs and more time and energy to devote to the cultiva- 
tion of his moral and mental powers. It has always been expected that 
they would aid him in the acquisition of knowledge, thus tending to make 
him a better and more contented citizen. This policy must be admitted 
by all to be a good one. . . . The Federal government has long been com- 
mitted to this policy. (Page 2.) 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor. 1907. 

I would again most heartily recommend that we do something toward 
obtaining a shorter day for the working girls of our State. . . . When a 
girl works from 8 a. m. until 8.30 or 9 p. m. she is missing the best part of 
her life, that part that stands for self-culture, education, and recreation. 
(Pages 4-5.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. Irene 
Osgood, Special Agent. 

Another group much larger ... is made up of girls who have held on 
to the good but who have been crushed and deadened by their burdens. 
The routine of factory work, the home cares that fall to them after work, 
and the crowded and unhealthful living conditions have dissipated the 
natural and healthful cravings which stir and arouse bodily and natural 
activities. 

They live a machine-like existence and indifferently perform the func- 
tions of labor. They have no leisure for the interests and stimulating 
activities which they as human beings have a right to enjoy. In no way 
do they get connected up with the life of the community. Their own home 
is crowded and offers no place for the entertainment of friends. This is 
the class of girls that most arouses one's sympathy. They have retained 
the fundamental virtues. But they and the community are heavy losers 
because of this dead-level and joyless existence. Either their few years 



308 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED in school failed to make them aware of the stimulation of social and com- 

STATES 

mercial life, or, more likely, it is the after years that have robbed them of 
all spirit. Their only hope is for more leisure, less wearying work in 
the shop, fewer home cares, and an opportunity for recreation. They 
need to be re-created, to enjoy the pleasures, and to share in the broader 
intelligence of the church, the school, and the settlement. (Page 1107.) 

The Economic and Social Importance of the Eight-Hour Movement. G eorge 
Gun TON. New York, Amer. Federation of Labor, 1889. 

It is one of the characteristic features of modern industrial life that 
by its division and specialization of labor, it tends to increase the intensity 
of the strain upon the nervous energies of the laborer. In no country in 
the world is this fact more prevalent than in America. The persistency 
with which industrial energies are intensified in this country have come 
to be almost regarded as a national characteristic. It has become a 
recognized fact by medical science that the first step toward remedying 
this condition is more leisure, more physical and mental repose, more and 
longer periods of relief from the strain which the specialized industrial 
life imposes. This has become absolutely necessary for both physical 
and social reasons. For physical reasons, because it makes wholesome 
living and normal physical health possible, and socially because without 
it frequent social contact is prevented or the susceptibility to the socializing 
influence is destroyed. The great mass of laborers are compelled to work 
all the year round under the same monotonous condition. This is made 
indispensable by the very nature of modern methods in industry. Under 
the factory system the laborers become mere wheels in a colossal machine, 
in which the presence of all is necessary to the efficient labor of any. 
(Pages 12-13.) 

Discussions in Economics and Statistics. Vol. II. Francis A. Walker, 
Ph.D., LL.D. The Eight-Hour Law Agitation. New York, Holt, 
1899. 

... 1 have small sympathy with the views so frequently, and it seems 
to me brutally, expressed, that the working classes have no need for 
leisure, beyond the bare necessities of physical rest and repose, to get 
ready for the morrow's work; that they do not know what to do with 
vacant hours; and that a shortening of the term of labor would, in the 
great majority of cases, lead to an increase of dissipation and drunken- 
ness. Is it our fellow-beings, our own countrymen, of whom we are 



BENEFIT OF LEISURE AND RECREATION 3O9 

speaking? It seems to me this talk ... is the poorest sort of pessimistic united 
nonsense. It is closely akin to what we used to hear about slavery being 
a humane and beneficent institution. . . . 

. . . We may well desire that somewhat more, and much more, of 
leisure and of recreation should mingle with the daily life of our fellows 
than is now known to most of them. It is a pity, it is a great pity, that 
working men should not see more of their families by daylight; should 
not have more time for friendly converse or for distinct amusements; 
should not have larger opportunities for social and public affairs. Doubt- 
less many would always, and still more would at first, put the newly ac- 
quired leisure to uses that were lower than the best, . . . were even, in 
instances, mischievous and injurious. 

But the larger part of this would be due to the fact, not that the time 
now granted was too great, but that the time previously granted had been 
too small. . . . But such men, who might, it is conceded, become even 
worse men with more leisure, are not to furnish the rule for the great 
majority, who are decent, sober, and careful, fearing God, and loving their 
families. (Pages 383-385.) 



Fourteenth and Fifteenth Annual Conventions of the International Associa- 
tion of Factory Inspectors of America. Indianapolis, 1900. Niagara 
Falls, 1901. {Bound in New York Department of Labor Report, 1901.) 
The Shorter Workday in its Effect upon the Personal Character of the 
Worker. John Holbrook, Deputy Commissioner of Labor, Michigan. 

. . . Quality of product may be improved by a shorter day, and by 
this improvement in quality of the product has come to be considered 
the improvement of the quality of the laborer himself. The greatest 
capital invested in any enterprise, commercial or industrial, is not of 
buildings, machinery, and plants, but in the character of the men and 
women employed, and on this later capital stock there is no return possible 
of large profits without improvement of personal character. 

. . . We reached the second stage of this agitation when the privilege 
was asked to have opportunities for leisure, for the enlargement of mental 
grasp, for the cultivation of the home and home life, and for freedom for 
self-culture. (Pages 562-563.) 

A reduction in the hours of labor means for the hand-workers leisure 
for self-culture and the arts, moralities and the refinements of life. Many 
causes have contributed toward the elevation of the lot of labor, but one 
great concurrent cause has been the shortening of the hours. . . . 

It has not been shown that the workers' use of leisure has been less 



310 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



wise and moral than the use of leisure by the so-called leisured classes. 
They have learned to use their leisure hours just as rationally and bene- 
ficially as have the wealthier classes, and it would astonish an old-time 
advocate of constant work for labor, lest Satan should find mischief for 
idle hands to do, how wisely and well these very classes have used their 
spare hours; they have come to be constant and intelligent readers of 
scientific and mechanical journals. They have formed a disposition to 
read the best books and literature, and as a rule the working people are 
reading more serious and thoughtful books than any other class of society. 
(Pages 563-564.) 



The National Civic Federation Review. Vol. II, No. 8. Jan.-Feb., 1906. 
The first Annual meeting of the New England Civic Federation, Boston, 
Jan. 11, 1906. 

Marcus M. Marks, President, National Association of Clothing Manu- 
facturers: 

There is another consideration which prompts the demand on the part of 
labor for a shorter work-day; it is the greater desire for self-improvement. 

This has been encouraged by the advance in the public school of the 
system which affects our younger workmen in particular; also by the 
multiplication of popular free lectures, public libraries, cheap books and 
newspapers, etc., that have awakened in the workmen's minds the am- 
bition to lead a better life, possible only in the enjoyment of a reasonable 
amount of leisure. (Page 8.) 

(3) Special Benefit of Evening Leisure for Family Life, 
Education, etc. 

In all communities where the regular working day of 
reasonable length has been established the workers have 
benefited particularly by the regular evening leisure af- 
forded. Leisure in the evenings, after the day's work, 
affords the only opportunity for necessary home-life, edu- 
cation, and recreation. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers, 
spectors of Factories. 



Vol. XXVI. 1847-1848. Reports of In- 



Mr. Fishwick (Mill-owner), on this occasion, voluntarily bore testimony 
to the good effects which have been produced by the legislative protection. 



BENEFIT TO FAMILY LIFE, EDUCATION, ETC. 3II 

He mentioned another fact which, although an isolated case, I great 



cannot consider otherwise than as a proof, and one very early shown, of 
the improvement in the social state of the women employed in factories, 
which may fairly be expected from their being saved from that excess 
of daily labour, which cut them off from the duties and enjoyments of 
domestic life, and by an entire absorption of their time, rendered their 
lives a mere alternation of work and sleep. Mr. Fishwick stated to me 
that a young woman who had resided some years in the village, following 
the trade of a dress-maker, lately came to him and told him that she was 
going to remove; and on his asking the reason of her so doing, she replied, 
that her employment had fallen off since the hours in the factory had been 
reduced to 11, for the young women, in place of getting dresses made by 
her, now make them themselves at home. (Page 9.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1849. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1848. 

The object of those who wish to be allowed to work with relays of 
young persons and women is to extend the working of the mill beyond 10 
hours, and if they worked by relays the same number of hours as some are 
now doing with adult males, one set of the young persons and women 
might be employed as late as half-past 8 in the evening. All such young 
persons and women, even if they were honestly limited to 10 hours a day, 
would therefore be deprived of that which is generally held to be one of 
the greatest boons to the factory operatives in the Ten Hours' Act, vi^., 
the cessation from work at an early hour in the evening. It is vain to 
say that they would have the same amount of leisure at their disposal at 
other times of the day; 2 hours before breakfast, or in the middle of the 
day, might certainly be employed by some of the women in domestic 
matters, but to the young men and most of the young women they would 
be worse than useless. When their day's work is over at an early hour in 
the evening, and they have 3 hours at their disposal before it is time to go 
to bed, the factory workers then feel the full value of the shortened hours 
of labour; they can then take advantage of evening schools or other 
places of instruction, and turn their leisure to good account in many ways, 
both for moral improvement and for social and domestic comfort. (Page 
7.) 

Opinions of the Factory Operatives respecting the Ten Hours' Act: 
It must be remembered, too, that there has been more than 2 years 
of great suffering among the factory operatives, from many mills having 
worked short time, and many being altogether closed. A considerable 



BRITAIN 



312 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT number of the operatives must therefore be in very narrow circumstances, 

BRITAIN . . ... 

many, it is to be feared, in debt; so that it might fairly have been presumed 
that at the present time they would prefer working the longer time, in 
order to make up for past losses. ... I have been very much surprised 
to fmd so large a proportion of those receiving very moderate wages, and 
still more of those receiving very scanty wages, preferring to work 10 hours. 
The reason for their preference assigned by so many young persons and 
even adults, that it enabled them to attend evening schools, is a gratifying 
circumstance, as aflfording a good sign of the character of the factory 
population. (Pages 16-17.) 

Under the present mode of working the 10 hours, according to which 
the working day of young persons and women, and of the greater portion 
of adults also, is brought to a close at half-past 5 in the afternoon, the 
employed may derive the greatest benefit from the curtailment of their 
labour in the evening; for they are then enabled not only to cultivate the 
domestic affections, to learn domestic habits and so to elevate the char- 
acter of the working classes, but to avail themselves of those opportunities 
of mental culture. (Page 99.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1849. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1849. Appendix. Evi- 
dence of the Opinions of Persons Employed in Factories Respecting the 
Ten Hours' Act, Collected in September, October, and November, 1848. 

Letter from Messrs. Sidgwick, Mill-owners: We consider the plan 
most conducive to the comfort and advantage of the people employed in 
factories, is such an arrangement of the working time, in which they have 
to earn a livelihood, as will leave to them the longest possible space of 
disengaged time, between ceasing work in an evening and resuming it a 
morning for recreation, improvement, or their private business. (Page 
14.) 

To the elder females no portion of the day can be more valuable for 
recreation or attendance to domestic duties than the regular and contin- 
uous period this plan {i. e., closing mill at end of 10 hours' work) gives 
them, at the end of their daily factory labour. (Page 29.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1850. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1849. 

Among those who have carefully watched the operation of each suc- 
cessive restriction, the number, I am satisfied, is now large, who would 



BENEFIT TO FAMILY LIFE, EDUCATION, ETC. 313 

declare themselves content to work only 10 hours a day, . . . and this great 

BRITAIN 

I believe to be especially the case among mill-occupiers and managers 
who can from their own experience compare the state and condition of the 
operative class under the present factory system with their state and condi- 
tion under the hours of work during which they laboured 20 years ago. 

I am assured, that the attendance of young persons at night-schools, 
and the demand for garden allotments, bear powerful testimony to the 
advantages of a reduction in the number of working hours, and to the 
readiness with which the best disposed are willing to make a beneficial 
use of the additional hours, the present restriction leaves them for recrea- 
tion and improvement. (Page 41.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1850. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1849. 

It is an early stopping in the evening that the work people chiefly 
value; and if the free evening hours from 6 to 9 be secured the great object 
sought for by the Ten Hours' Act will be attained; for then the factory 
workers will be in what may be called the normal state of the operatives 
in the generality of trades, and will, like them, have leisure for domestic 
arrangements, for improving themselves by attending evening schools, 
with opportunities for healthful and reasonable recreations. . . . Where 
the law is fully carried out, according to its true intention, the work people 
appear to value the limitation more and more in proportion as they have 
longer experience of its effects; and the masters appear to be getting daily 
better reconciled to it; partly by finding that, by the increased alertness 
of their work people, by the closer application they are now enabled to 
give, together with some additional speeding of the machinery not before 
tried, the produce is much nearer to that of 12 hours than it was conceived 
possible it could be brought to, but partly also by the marked change for 
the better which they see in the health, appearance, and contentment of 
their work people. (Page 5.) 

In one of the letters sent to me the following interesting statement was 
given, representing, as I believe correctly, a picture of domestic life almost 
unknown in the manufacturing district, especially of a large town like 
Bradford, until the hours of labor were reduced and regulated by the 
Legislature. The comfort and feelings here described, though naturally 
of slow grov/th, are I hope daily extending their influence, and may be 
either much encouraged or much retarded, according as the Government 
and Legislature of the Country exercise a paternal care for the different 
classes who look up to them for protection: 



314 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT ... "I called in to see an old factory weaver; it was very interesting 

and delightful to behold the old man sitting with his youngest son; they 
had a basket of potatoes for sets, and both seemed at a loss, being new 
gardeners, but were very glad to have an opportunity of learning; he 
had 3 daughters, and 2 young women lodgers, very busy sewing and knit- 
ting, and all teachmg each other. ... I asked the old mother how she 
liked the Ten Hour Bill. She said very well, she did not know how she 
must do if the girls worked any longer, they assisted her all they could, 
and were learning to do household work, and could sew and knit better 
than she could, and could read very nicely too; they could not do with 
any more than ten hours. The old father said it was a grand thing, the 
Ten Hours Bill; he was learning to be a gardener, and would not like to 
give it up, which he would have to do if they worked any more hours." 
(Pages 48-49.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1867. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1867. 

No exigency of trade can offer any compensation whatever, for the 
evils of long hours of work, for the wives of the industrial classes. I 
mention this feeling of the bleachers and dyers, not as their advocate for 
uniform working hours with factory workers, but as a sincere advocate 
for uniformity of time for all labour limited by legal restrictions; and from 
a conviction that, all efforts at night school instruction for adolescents and 
adults, for their social improvement, and all attempts at closing public 
houses and beer houses after reasonable hours must be abortive, so long 
as the great bulk of the wives and daughters of the working men are un- 
able, from sheer ignorance, to render their homes attractive by domestic 
qualifications; and by a higher standard of moral feeling, to appreciate 
the value of virtue and self-respect, of which, I am afraid, they are so 
commonly ignorant. If all labour in factories and workshops had been 
restricted in future to 6 o'clock at night and to 2 o'clock on Saturdays, 
the next generation would have repaid the present by a morality which 
the past has never dreamt of. (Pages 25-26.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1868. 

Nevertheless, the Act has shown itself, as initiating a moral obligation 
at least upon the employers of juvenile and female labour, in rendering it 
uniform in its hours; and thus bringing within the ordinary reach of 



BENEFIT TO FAMILY LIFE, EDUCATION, ETC. 315 

those who have already made some advances in elementary knowledge, great 
either independently of factory labour or in connection with it, various 
institutions for intellectual purposes, hitherto languishing for want of 
pupils, in consequence of their hours of work preventing them from, or 
unfitting them for, enjoying the privileges such institutions were intended 
to afford. (Page 83.) 

Assuredly the usefulness of the first hours of rational freedom from 
late employment has not been overrated. The power which the working 
classes now possess of making arrangements for out-door enjoyments in 
the summer, and for intellectual advancement of every kind during the 
winter months, is fully appreciated, and would be most reluctantly parted 
with. It is indeed spoken of as a boon which they longed to possess years 
ago, and is most thankfully acknowledged. (Page 277.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIII. 1874. Report of Inspector of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1874. 

It is for the public good that our girls and women shall not be over- 
worked and shall have some leisure in the evening, without which this 
work would degenerate into slavery, pernicious to mind and body. (Page 
58.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1875. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1875. 

At the commencement of the year, many manufacturers, on considera- 
tion of the health of women, were determined to begin work half an hour 
later in the morning than they had previously been accustomed to. . . . 
But it soon became apparent that the employed, as a rule, were opposed 
to the alteration and dissatisfied; and preferred the additional half-hour's 
relaxation in the evening ... the half hour at night increased the oppor- 
tunities for recreation, improvement and social or domestic duties. 
(Pages 63-65.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report from the Select 
Committee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness. T. Flint, Rep. Scottish Shopkeepers' Association: 
1178. Do you think a part of the necessity for early closing is based 
on the fact that later hours in shops mean degeneration in the health of 
the shop assistants? ... It certainly affects their life as a whole. They 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



316 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



do not enjoy the same privileges that other people enjoy, they have not 
the same time for improving their mental condition, or enjoying the other 
different phases of life that other people have who are oif duty earlier in 
the day. (Page 50.) 

Witness. J. Jamieson, Rep. Scottish Shopkeepers' Union: 
3183. I approve of it (the bill) chiefly in the direction of earlier hours 
in the evening; 1 think there would be greater mental and physical bene- 
fits from that than from anything else. (Page 131.) 



The Economic Journal, Vol. XIV. London s 
Black. London, Macmillan, 1904. 



Tailoresses. Clementina 



This prevalence of long- and late-working hours virtually cuts off 
the young tailoress from the advantages of any technical training that 
might be carried on in evening hours. She, like other working people — 
may I not say like other human beings? — is not disposed after a ten-hour's 
working day for further exertion either of brain or hand. (Page 566.) 

GERMANY AmtUche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerbe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XVIII. 1893. [Official Information from Annual Reports 
of the {German) Factory Inspectors, 1893.] Berlin, 1894. 

Leipzig: 

There can be no doubt whatever, that the shortening of the daily toil 
of women in factories has a most beneficial effect upon the workers. They 
can attend better to their homes, cultivate their housekeeping and home- 
making powers. (Page 148.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the New Jersey Inspector of Factories and Workshops. 1893. 

In conformity with the principle of regulation the legislature has sought 
to promote the safety, health, happiness and welfare of the persons desig- 
nated, by regulating their employment in this State, and in accordance 
with an enlightened and humane policy, especially towards young persons 
and females. 

It says to the employer, whether a person or a corporation: "you may 
take all you can fairly get of the labor, skill and industry of your employes, 
within ten hours of every day and for five hours every Saturday. Beyond 
that you shall not go. The remainder of the day and night, and the Satur- 
day half-holiday, belong to your employer himself, his family and the 
community. He may use that time for leisure, rest, recreation, reading, 



LIGHTEST WORK INJURIOUS IF TOO PROLONGED 317 

study, travel, or in any lawful manner whatever that he pleases, or in united 
doing nothing at all." states 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

The family furnishes the really fundamental education of the growing 
generation — the education of character; and the family life thus really 
determines the quality of the rising generation as efficient or non-efficient 
wealth producers. When one or both parents are away from home for 
twelve or thirteen hours (the necessary period for those who work ten 
hours) a day, the children receive comparatively little attention. What 
was said in the opening paragraph of this section in discussing the im- 
portance of a good family life in the training of character needs repeated 
emphasis, for it is the fundamental argument for a shorter working day. 
(Pages 70-73.) 

United States Congress Senate Document, No. 141. Eight hours for laborers 
on government work. Hearings before the Committee on education and 
labor of the United States Senate, 1st session, 57th Congress. 1901- 
1902. 

Argument of James O'Connell, President of International Association 
of Machinists: 

The history of the movement in this country where the hours of labor 
have been reduced show a higher standard of manhood and a higher 
standard of intelligence and of excellency in work and in life, a higher and 
a better home, a happier and better family life, and a more comfortable 
and better home. In every trade and industry where the hours of labor 
have been reduced there has been no reduction of the output. (Page 522.) 



III. SHORTER HOURS THE ONLY POSSIBLE 
PROTECTION 

A. Overlong Hours make Lightest Work Injurious 

The length of working hours, irrespective of the kind 
of occupation, is in itself, a menace to health. Even the 
lightest work becomes totally exhausting when carried on 
for an excessive length of time. 



3l8 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

B^MN British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-1832. Report from the Select 

Committee on the "Bill to regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." Thomas Young, Esq., 
M.D., Physician at Bolton. 18th July, 1832. 

10572. This work in factories is now and then attempted to be justified 
by being denominated "light and easy"; will you state whether it would 
obviate those effects even if the work were proved to be, as it is denomi- 
nated, "light and easy"? — I think not. The employment cannot be con- 
sidered a laborious one in itself or for a short period; but it is one which 
requires constant attention, it is irksome and fatiguing from its uniform- 
ity, the length of time it is followed, and the postures of the body required; 
it may rather be denominated fatiguing than laborious; it is not hard 
labour. To illustrate it, let us suppose a female doomed to thread needles 
as fast as possible, in constant succession and incessantly for twelve hours 
a day; to thread a needle is by no means laborious operation, but the con- 
tinued and unvaried employment would be irksome and fatiguing in the 
extreme. (Page 520.) 

10573. Would it not in some measure exhaust the nervous energies 
or at least fatigue the mind as well as the body, and occasion consequently 
as pernicious an effect upon the health, and sometime more so, than if the 
labour were more strenuous, and at the same time more varied? — It cer- 
tainly would. (Page 520.) 

Sir Anthony Carlisle, F.R.S., Surgeon in the Westminster Hospital: 

11049. Is not that employment which has been sometimes denomi- 
nated "light and easy," but being one of uniform and tedious, though not 
very strenuous exertion, but still producing great fatigue of mind as well 
as body, more exhausting and injurious to the constitution than change- 
able locomotive exercise, when endured only for a moderate length of 
time, with due intermission? — I am convinced of that; because the sen- 
sorial powers being exhausted by an uninterrupted succession of muscular 
actions, must necessarily weaken or exhaust the powers of life; and there- 
fore such exertions cannot be followed without a violation of the laws of 
animal nature. 

11050. So you would not consider it a sufficient apology for this ex- 
ceedingly long continued labour, if it were alleged truly, that abstractly 
considered, it demanded very little muscular exertion? — No, I would say, 
in such instances, it would still be a violation of the powers of nature. 
(Page 559.) 

Sir William Blizard, F.R.S., Surgeon to the London Hospital and lec- 
turer on surgery, anatomy, and physiology: 



LIGHTEST WORK INJURIOUS IF TOO PROLONGED 319 

11199. Is not the employment in question, though it may, if con- great 



templated for a moment, seem light or easy, yet when continued for such 
a length of time as to induce much fatigue to mind and body, as it is 
asserted it does, likely to be more prejudicial than even more strenuous 
labour pursued for a moderate length of time, and with due intervals for 
rest and refreshment? — I am clearly of that opinion; however light it 
may be, yet extended as it has been described, the consequences must in 
my opinion be as stated. (Page 572.) 

John Elliottson, Esq., M.D., F.R.S., Physician to St. Thomas's Hos- 
pital : 

11258. Should you not conceive that labour, sometimes denominated 
"light and easy" considered in itself, and apparently demanding but 
little muscular exertion, but continued for so great a length of time as to 
produce much fatigue of mind and body, and ultimately great exhaustion, 
is more injurious than a still greater exertion endured for a less length of 
time, and with longer intermission? — Certainly. (Page 577.) 

Charles Aston Key, Esq., Surgeon at Guy's Hospital: 

11418. It is alleged by the witnesses, that the labour in question is 
very fatiguing and exhausting; it is nevertheless stated by some who 
apologize for this length of labour, that it is "light and easy"; may I 
ask you, whether an employment which demands such constant and 
excessive attention for so long a period of time, and mainly in an erect 
position of the body, has not a more prejudicial effect than more natural 
exertions, pursued for a moderate length of time, and with due inter- 
missions? — I should consider it matters not of what nature the labour may 
be, if it is persisted in under an extreme state of exhaustion and fatigue of 
mind and body; if it be so persisted in, in an erect position, I consider it 
to be exceedingly injurious to the growth and development of the powers 
of the body. (Page 591.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report from the Select 
Committee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., of University of Oxford, Fellow of 
College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons. Attached 
to London Hospital and Brompton Hospital. 

5352. Would this be a fair way of putting it: it is not the actual work 
of people in shops, but having to be there and standing about and sitting 
about in bad air; it is the long hours which is the injurious part of it? — 
Quite so, the prolonged tension. (Page 218.) 



BRITAIN 



320 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

Witness, Sir William S. Church, President of the Royal College of 
Physicians: 

2306. . . . The evils which arise, I think, in these cases are those 
which arise rather from the long hours of attendance than from the sever- 
ity of the labour. (Page 108.) 

Evils of the Factory System. Demonstrated by Parliamentary Evidence. 
Charles Wing. London, Saunders and Otley, 1837. 

We must judge of the nature of any employment by its effects. Many 
employments require considerable exertion of strength, and yet, from being 
less monotonous, from requiring less of continued attentiveness, and from 
being carried on in daylight and in the open air, may be much less in- 
jurious than factory labour. But, however light, however easy, however 
healthy an employment may be it may be so protracted as to become 
neither light, nor easy, nor healthy, and that this has been the case with 
the factory labour no one who reads the evidence brought before the several 
committees that have from time to time been appointed can for a moment 
doubt. (Pages xxix-xxx.) 



GERMANY 



The Eight Hours Day. Sidney Webb, D.B., and Harold Cox, B.A. 
London, Walter Scott, 1891. 

The human body needs frequent change of surroundings, change of 
exercise, to keep it in perfect condition. A man, and still more a woman, 
will suifer from protracted occupation at one particular task, even if that 
task in itself is healthy enough. And of all the manual work done in an 
advanced industrial community to-day, how much is healthy in its nature 
or done under healthy conditions? (Pages 6-7.) 

Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 101. Sit^ung, 16. April, 1891. [Proceed- 
ings of the {German) Reichstag, 101st Session, April 16, 1891.] 

Representative Grillenberger: 

If I am told that the laws already protect men from over-long hours 
in dangerous employments or those which injure the health of the em- 
ployee, I reply that therein is a proof of our correctness in demanding a 
general legal working day. The health of the worker is bound to be in- 
jured by over-long hours in any line of work, no matter what it is, and if 
the Bundesrath wishes to be logical, then it must take the position that 



LIGHTEST WORK INJURIOUS IF TOO PROLONGED 32 1 

the principle already acknowledged in that section of the law must be GERMANY 
extended uniformly. It will be more rational to regulate conditions with 
foresight, by the law, than to leave them to work themselves out by slower 
methods. (Page 2364.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten und Bergbehorden fur das 
Jahr 1907. Bd. III. [Reports of the {German) Factory and Mine 
Inspectors for 1907. Vol. III.] Berlin, Decker, 1908. 

Bremen. 

Women and young workers often fail to obtain the care and considera- 
tion for their physical well-being and working powers that should be given 
them by their employers, the reason being, in general, that the work they 
do is regarded as "light work," and therefore not harmful. 

While it is quite true that in most cases their work is, by itself, not 
unreasonable in its demands upon their strength, yet when even easy 
tasks are performed in connection with highly perfected, rapidly speeded 
machinery, and are continued for hours and repeated thousands of times, 
they then constitute work that makes very great demands not only upon 
the physical endurance, but also upon the nervous system. (Pages 24, ^"^.) 

Die Krankheiten der Arheiter. Bd. 2. [The Diseases of Working People. 
Vol. 2.] Dr. LuDwiG Hirt. Leipzig, 1878. 

In the second place the working time must be considered, because in 
this factor of work lies the greatest possibility of exhausting the strength 
by forced exertion. (Page 266.) 

No attitude of the body is harmful in itself; only in prolonging it until 
it produces harmful results; all the well-known disturbances, such as 
varicose veins, etc., etc., arise, not through sitting or standing, but 
through excessively prolonged sitting or standing. (Page 268.) 

Handhuch der Hygiene. Bd. 8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] 
Edited by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und 
Fabrikgesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legis- 
lation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

When we take up the question of the effect of special trades upon 
morbidity and mortality, it must be premised that the idea of industrial 
diseases or occupation diseases in the ordinary sense of the term is in- 
accurate, for the specific so-called dangers of trades as such are not in- 
separably bound up with those trades, as the special hygiene of the factory 



322 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY proves daily. Only in so far as the length of working time, and severity 
of physical or mental labor are concerned in the various trades, or the 
necessarily close crowding in closed rooms in one or another occupation, 
can we speak of the different effects of different kinds of occupation upon 
the organism. (Page 8.) 



ITALY 



Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the International Association for Labor 
Legislation. Lucerne, 1908. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

Factory Inspector Furst: 

A celebrated hygienist of Germany, Prof. Sommerfeld, says: "Over- 
strain may be either the result of unreasonably hard work, or 
of hours of work that are too long even though the processes of work do 
not make special demands upon muscular strength. In both cases the 
same results appear in course of time, sooner, in proportion as other dan- 
gers are involved in the occupation, or the organism of the worker is younger 
and less resistant, or the social conditions of the workers more wretched. 
(Pages 124-125.) 

Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Nov. -Dec, 1895. Le Travail Humain 
et ses Lois. [The Laws of Human Work.] Francesco S. Nitti, 
University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Brier e, 1895. 

But, says Lagrange, it is not solely the occupation demanding great 
muscular exertion that produces exhaustion, but it is often, and, in in- 
dustrial life, almost always, the occupation requiring a great number of 
hours of work. In such cases, combustion is not very active and its wastes 
have time to be eliminated; the products of disassimilation do not neces- 
sarily accumulate in the organism and there is no auto-intoxication, but 
what does happen is that much organic material is used up and the organ- 
ism suffers extensive losses. (Page 1034.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Illinois Factory Inspectors. 1893. 

The lightest occupations are rendered injurious by long hours of labor. 
(Page 8.) 



Journal of Social Science, containing the Transactions of the American 
Association. No. XXV, Dec, 1888. The Working Women of New 
York. Elizabeth Stowe Brown, M.D. Boston, Damrell, 1888. 

It must be remembered, also, that a comparatively harmless industry may 
be carried to a degree that is alarmingly injurious. . . . Eight or ten hours 
should be the limit of a woman's day of steady application. (Page 86.) 



THE remedy: shorter hours 323 

Charities and the Commons, March 6, 1909. Vol. XXI. No. 23. New united 
York. Factory Inspection in Pittsburgh. Florence Kelley, Secre- ^'^^'^^^ 
tary National Consumers' League; Former Chief Factory Inspector, 
Illinois. 

Injurious conditions of work. 

Industries may be injurious by reason of the nature of the machinery 
or of the material used (lead, sulphur, acid, etc.) or of dust produced in 
the process (steel, brass, cork, etc.) or of strain due to heat, cold, glare, 
darkness, or speed. Finally, an industry not intrinsically injurious may 
become so in a high degree by sheer lengthening of working hours, particu- 
larly when the workers are required to stand. (Page 1112.) 

Even where the . . . work was as simple as wrapping caramels or 
packing crackers, the long hours combined with enforced standing made 
a harmless process highly injurious. (Page 1115.) 



B. The Remedy: Shorter Hours 

A decrease of the intensity of exertion in industry is not 
feasible. The needed protection to working women, there- 
fore, can be afforded only through shortening the hours 
of labor. 

New South Wales. Legislative Assembly. Report of the Working of the Australia 
Factories' and Shops' Act. 1904. 

That factory life is on the whole, distinctly inimical to the physical 
and nervous well-being of women seems to me very probable, if not cer- 
tain; but as it appears to be an inevitable condition of life in highly pop- 
ulated cities, . . . and as it is unlikely that we can ever escape from the 
system, in view of the increasing difficulty of making a living, the only 
remedy seems to be to minimize as far as possible the evils which the 
factory system brings in its train. (Page 13.) 

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerbe-Aufsichts- GERMANY 
beamten. XIV. 1889. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors. 1889.] Berlin, 1890. 

As to the efforts being made in some directions to abolish factory work 
entirely for women, it has not been found that the workers themselves. 



324 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY even the married ones wish for complete restriction, but they wish for 
reasonable limitations for the abolition of night work and Sunday work, 
and for a working day of not more than 10 hours. (Page 93.) 

Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 103. Sit^ung. 18. April, 1891. [Proceed- 
ings of the {German) Reichstag, 103rd Session, April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Bebel: 

Such facts (growth of infant mortality) speak for themselves of the 
fundamental need of legal protection to put a stop to these evils. . . . 
That we should take women out of industry is impossible ... it would 
also be a catastrophe . . . but, that we are called upon to provide that 
industry shall not, in its use of the labor of its working women, overstep 
those bounds which must be preserved if the physical development of 
women is not to be injured to the utmost limit, is, in my opinion, self- 
evident. (Page 2420.) 

There is this to be remembered, that we owe it to our women and 
young girls, remembering their inestimable importance to the physical 
and spiritual progress of the race, as the mothers and teachers of children, 
to establish laws which shall afford them ample protection for their own 
physical and intellectual health and development. (Page 2423.) 

Die Jahres-Berichte der k. hayerischen Fabrik- und Gewerbe-Inspektoren 
fiir das Jahr 1899. [Report of the Royal Bavarian Factory Inspectors 
for 1899.] Munich, 1900. 

Factory work for women seems to ^be, under our present social organ- 
ization, an industrial necessity, and it is only possible, at present, by 
passing specific protective measures, to ward off from working women 
those special dangers to health and morals which they would otherwise 
encounter. (Page 24. Preface.) 

Die Beschdftigung Verheiratheter Frauen in Fdhriken. Nach den Jahres- 
herichten der Gewerbeaufsichtsheamten fiir das Jahr 1899 bearheitet im 
Reich samt des Innern. [The Employment of Married Women in Fac- 
tories. From Reports of the {German) Factory Inspectors for 1899, 
compiled in the Imperial Home Office.] Berlin, 1901. 

"And yet" (wrote one inspector) "the limitation of working hours 
appears to be the only solution for securing to women enough time to care for 
their families and for preventing the premature exhaustion of their physical 



THE remedy: shorter hours 325 

strength. It is also to be hoped that the great usefulness of women in GERMANY 
factory work will not permit of their general dismissal." (Page 174.) 

Jahresherichte des Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Kdnigreich Wurttemherg 
fiir das Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of Wiirttemherg for 1902.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1903. 

. . . Reduction of hours does not keep pace with advances in technique 
. . . where there is an obvious tendency to make use of human power to 
the fullest possible extent. This is especially true in the textile mills, 
where certain older processes are modified by new contrivances. The 
result now is that, while the wages of skilled spinners (women) have risen 
about 12 or 13 per cent, the number of spindles on which they must con- 
centrate attention for 11 hours has been raised from 500 to 750, an in- 
crease of 50 per cent. This is not quite the same as saying that the strain 
upon the spinners is 50 per cent greater, since a certain number of helpers 
are provided. Nevertheless the attention and skill demanded are much 
greater than was formerly the case. Such examples make it plain that, 
with this increasing intensity of strain in work, the hours of work must 
be correspondingly shortened if the people are to be protected from ruin 
of their health. (Pages 74-5.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Kdnigreich Wiirttemherg 
fiir das Jahr 1903. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of JViirttemberg, 1903.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1904. 

This uncontested fact of rising claims upon the physical and mental 
capacity of the workman, which is more or less strikingly evident in every 
department of labor, has in recent years brought the question of shorter 
hours to the front. The necessity of compensation through shorter hours 
is not only recognized by the inspectors, but by many employers as well. 
(Page 96.) 

Handhuch der Arheiterwohlfahrt. Bd. II. [Handbook of the General 

Welfare of the Working Classes. Vol. II.] Edited by Dr. Otto 

Dammer. Arbeiterschuti. [Protection of Working People.] Dr. 
AscHER. Stuttgart, Enke, 1902. 

The long working hours also explain the well-known fact that waiters 
and waitresses are "used up" at a comparatively early age. . . . The 
effect of work carried on during long hours in -badly ventilated places is 



326 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY ^^^^ important. . . . It is clear that many of these evils can be remedied 
only by shortening the working hours. (Page 70.) 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Gesammelte Ahhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete Works. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschajtliche Bedeutung der Verkiiriung des Industriellen 
Arheitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society at Jena in 1901. 
Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

On the one hand, it must be admitted that daily monotonous labor has 
a stupefying influence; on the other, that technical and scientific demands 
create a continuous strain upon intelligence; hence there is only one way 
to restore a balance: — by giving some opportunity for natural intelligence 
to develop, by concentrating daily toil into the shortest possible time and 
leaving the longest possible time for rest and intellectual stimulus, that 
people may not be made stupid, but, in spite of the monotony of their 
daily tasks, may retain the capacity for interest in other things. (Pages 
237-238.) 

Sixth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography, Vienna, 1887. 
Part XIV. Vol. I. Fabrikhygiene und Geset^gebung. [Factory 
Hygiene and Legislation.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory 
Inspector. Vienna, 1887. 

The late evening hours of work running into the night are bitterly 
complained of. . . . But however desirable, exclusion of women from 
factories is impossible. . . . One thing, however, is certain, — the need of 
special protection for women, as well as for children, becomes more and 
more pressing. (Pages 29-30.) 



Untersuchungen iiber die Gesundheitsverhdltnisse der Fabrikbevolkerung 
der Schweii. [Investigations into the Conditions of Health of the Swiss 
Factory Workers.] Dr. Fridolin Schuler, Swiss Factory Inspector, 
and Dr. A. E. Burckhardt, Professor of Hygiene, Basle. Aarau, 
Sauerldnder, 1889. 

There are quite definite types of illness which are prominent in women 
workers. First of all are to be mentioned constitutional ailments, anaemia, 
chlorosis, general weakness. They are especially characteristic of working 
women under 30 years and are frequent also in later years, giving an aver- 
age of 10 per cent to 17 f)er cent of all disabilities. It is true that the 



THE remedy: shorter hours 327 

physique of woman predisposes her more readily to these disorders, but switzer- 

besides that, her generally inferior power of resistance to unhealthy in- ^^^^ 

fluences must not be overlooked. When it is remembered how long may 

be the duration of constitutional disease, it almost seems as if women 

should be excluded from mills and factories, or at least their entrance to 

them made more difficult. As to shut them out is a social impossibility, 

it follows that their conditions must be improved, and they themselves 

must be protected, whether this shall be done by raising the working age, 

or by lowering the maximum hours per day, or by earlier Saturday closing 

is not to be superficially decided. (Page 170.) 



Massachusetts Senate Documents. No. 33. 1874. ^^IS^ 

STATES 

The Committee on the Labor Question, to whom was referred so much 
of the Governor's address as relates to Labor Reform, having considered 
so much thereof as pertains to the enactment of a ten hour law, and 
having also considered the petition of Wendell Phillips and others for 
the passage of such a law. Report: 

That the advocates of a reduction of the present hours of labor in 
textile manufactories claim, and produce evidence to show, that ten hours 
is as long as females or children should be required, or allowed, to work 
in the close confinement of the mills, if the Commonwealth has any interest 
in insuring a healthy and intelligent posterity; that working eleven and 
twelve hours a day in these factories saps the energies and produces a 
depression of spirits that find relief only in the indulgence of intoxi- 
cants. 

They claim that the only remedy for these evils is to diminish the hours 
of labor. (Page \.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission. Final Report. Vol. 
XIX. 1902. 

It is certain that any programme for reducing this intensity of exertion 
must fail. The entire tendency of industry is in the direction of an in- 
creased exertion. Any restrictions on output must work to the disad- 
vantage of American industry, and the employers are often right in their 
demand, usually successful, that such restrictions be abandoned. This 
being true, there is but one alternative if the working population is to be 
protected in its health and trade longevity, namely, a reduction of the 
hours of labor. (Page 764.) 



328 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Wealth and Progress. George Gunton. New York, Appleton, 1887. 

In proportion as the use of improved machinery is extended, and the 
specialization of labor is increased, does this labor become physically 
and nervously more exhausting; and in proportion as this pressure in- 
creases, unless the working time is correspondingly reduced, the laborer's 
susceptibility to the refining and elevating influences of his social environ- 
ment is lessened and his leisure moments find him dull and indifferent to 
all moral and political influences. (Page 359.) 



Industrial Conference under the Auspices of the National Civic Federation. 
New York, 1902. The Eight-hour Day. Prof. George Gunton, In- 
stitute of Social Economics. New York, The Winthrop Press, 1903. 

The factory system makes this (shortening hours) more and more 
necessary in proportion as it is perfected in its mechanism. It becomes 
all the time more and more exacting. The greater the perfection of the 
machinery or the method, the more attention is required. (Page 173.) 

The remedy for this cannot be found in slackening up on the demands 
for economic output and efi'ectiveness in the machinery. . . . The remedy 
for that must come on the other side, shortening the day, not slackening 
the effort. The tension may not be lessened, but the hours may be re- 
duced. The exhaustion on the laborer must be avoided, but it cannot be 
avoided by reducing production . . . they must have relief by lessening 
the duration of the pressure every day. (Pages 174-175.) 



C. The Method: Legislation 

Experience has shown that legislation is necessary to 
protect women from excessive working hours; and that 
such legal limitation of hours is the most direct, most eifec- 
tive, and most satisfactory method of protection, for all 
concerned. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 1846. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1845. 

The system involved in these two alterations (i. e. restriction on the 
labour of female adults and on children), and now so generally, I may say 
universally approved, as practically beneficial as well to employers as 



THE method: legislation 329 

employed had been long practised by a large and influential body of mill- great 



occupiers; nevertheless, I do not believe there is a single individual who 
has been acquainted with the proceedings in these cases, but will allow 
that it would have been vain to hope either the restriction on children or 
on women would have become general, or could have been enforced, with- 
out a legislative provision on the subject. (Page 24.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1849. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1848. 

No one doubts that the longer manufacturing machinery is kept in 
motion, the greater will be the produce; and if it could be kept going all 
the 24 hours of each day, without compromising the physical and moral 
health of the human beings by which it is worked, no one would dream of 
interfering with it. But . . . the Legislature has decided that such 
persons shall be protected agamst the temptations held out to them by the 
capitalist to work in a manner that is inconsistent with a sound healthy 
state of the population morally and physically. That is the whole ques- 
tion; it is a legislative interference demanded by a strong, overruling 
moral necessity, superior to all considerations of wealth. (Page 7.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 1865. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1864. 

The condition of the persons employed — shows the absolute necessity 
for supervision, and has strengthened my opinion — that free labour (if 
so it may be termed) even in a free country, requires the strong arm of the 
law to protect it from the cupidity and ignorance of parents; on all hands 
there appears the evidence that most of the workshops of this great com- 
mercial country are found to have fallen into the inevitable track of com- 
petitive industry when unrestricted by law, namely, to cheapen prices by 
the employment of women and children in the first instance, and then to 
increase production by protracted hours of work without much regard to 
age, sex, or physical capability, or to the need of social requirements. 
(Page 34.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Com- 
mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. Special Report. 

The great majority of witnesses expressed their opinion that though 
voluntary action had eifected much improvement, little could be expected 



BRITAIN 



330 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GR^T from it in the poorer neighborhood and that nothing short of legislation 

would be effective. . . . 

JVitness, Thomas Sutherst, Chairman of the Shop Hours' League: 

441. Are you acquainted with the Early Closing Association, so called? 
—Yes. 

442. . . . — I believe that that Association has done a considerable 
deal of good; but why, I think, their efforts are inadequate to cope with 
the evil is, because they have been in existence for 40 years, and have not 
called in the aid of legislation, and the hours have not been permanently 
curtailed to any appreciable extent, whilst in the case of the artizans and 
mechanics whose labour has directly or indirectly been influenced by legis- 
lation, their hours have been reduced to 56 per week. Therefore I argue 
from that, that with the best intentions, and after working very hard the 
Early Closing Association has failed to effect that curtailment of the hours 
which is necessary to meet the evils resulting from them. . . . 

The Hygiene Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, M.D., 
A.B., F.R.C.P. London, Percival, 1892. 

. . . When labor is performed in factories and shops with over-heated 
and impure air, where the workmen are subjected to excessive heat, to 
steam and noxious vapors and gases, to abounding dust, to industrial 
details involving strain upon the attention and mental wear, then what 
may be called an artificial limit to the duration of labour is called for, in- 
asmuch as muscular fatigue has conjoined with it incidents which add an 
intensity to it as a health factor. (Pages 49-50.) 

Women in the Printing Trades. Edited hy ]. R. MacDonald. London, 
King, 1904. 

Some employers, like Mr. Bell, admit candidly enough that legislation 
enables them to be more humane (and humanity in this respect pays) 
than they could otherwise afford to be. The Act is "a great relief," such 
an employer has said. "Legislation is an excellent thing; existing hours 
are quite long enough. If a person has not done her work by the time 
they are up, she never will do it." "The Factory Acts are a very good 
thing," another has said. . . . "Legislation is a very good thing. I 
don't believe in long hours. Employers are often shortsighted and think 
that workers are like machines — the longer you work them the more they 
do; but this is not really the case; if they work from nine to seven they 
have done as much as they are good for." "The good done by the Factory 
Acts has quite outweighed any evils or hardships." (Page 82.) 



THE method: legislation 331 

Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, Ontario, Canada. 1895. CANADA 

. . . There is nothing so effective as good legislation. It is through 
this source that work has been made less burdensome for the laboring 
people. It is not only occupation that is needed for females, but employ- 
ment that is hedged round with wise laws, so that the least possible harm 
can follow. (Page 25.) 

Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, Ontario, Canada. 1900. 

The law regulating the hours of labor for women and girls requires close 
attention, if under existing circumstances women and girls must take their 
places as laborers in factories and workshops, their health, safety, and 
comfort must not be left to chance. Here, if anywhere, the shield of the 
law must be invoked against all preventable causes of evil and danger 
incidental to such employment. (Page 21.) 

Annalen des Deutschen Reich s. Bd. 21. 1888. [Annals of the German GERMANY 
Empire. Vol. 21.] Der Internationale Schuti der Arheiter. [Inter- 
national Labor Legislation.] Dr. George Adler, University of Frei- 
burg. Munich and Leipsic, Hirth, 1888. 

It is no longer necessary, fortunately, to bring forward lengthy proofs of 
the need for legal protection of labor. It is now almost universally ad- 
mitted that modern conditions of industry lead to lamentable consequences 
for the workers unless the state interferes for their protection. In the 
course of modern industrial development, evils arose in every nation which, 
for millions of the working classes, jeopardized all the attainments of 
civilization. (Page 465.) 

Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 103. Sitiung. 18. April, 1891. [Pro- 
ceedings of the {German) Reichstag, 103rd Session. April 18, 1891.] 

Representative Ulrich: 

The right of organization does not suffice. . . . England, the classic 
land of industry, shows most plainly that the struggle between capital 
and labor has increased in intensity and that, in spite of the right of com- 
bination little has been gained except by legislation. Women are at 
present far less in position to protect themselves through organization 
than men, and consequently we re-double our efforts to obtain legal regu- 
lation of their labor without exception. . . . Female labor has assumed 



332 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY enormous dimensions, and it should be the duty of government to estab- 
lish a normal day, wherewith to resist an increasing exploitation of working 
women. (Page 2411.) 

Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den Jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XXI. 1896. [Official Information from Reports of the 
(German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1897. 

The disadvantages resulting from the fact that legal protection is not 
extended to workers outside the factory are constantly becoming more 
conspicuous in the textile and clothing trades. It is becoming obvious 
that this is only an advantage to those employers and middle men who do 
nothing for the benefit of their employees, and it will be most unfortunate 
for restrictive legislation in this field to be so long delayed that the present 
exploitation of women's health and strength shall have gained the upper 
hand and be systematically carried on. Diisseldorf. (Page 265.) 

. . . The existing conditions call urgently for protective legislation for 
all young persons and women who are engaged in industry, without excep- 
tion. Bayern. (Page 265.) 

Die Arheiterfrage. [The Labor Question.] Dr. Heinrich Herkner, 
Professor of Political Economy in Karlsruhe. Berlin, Guttentag, 1894. 

If it is concluded that it be urgent to reduce the hours of work for social, 
politico-economic, and moral reasons, then it is obviously most effective 
to bring this reduction about by the simpler and safer method of state 
intervention. True, well organized workmen are able to win favorable 
working hours for themselves, better possibly than may be obtained by 
legislation. Yet, because it is unnecessary to resort to legislative pro- 
tection for a highly favored elite among workers, it cannot therefore be 
held as justifiable to withhold this protection from that incomparably 
larger number who stand in much more urgent need of protection. A legal 
reduction of hours of work will give many such laborers the first oppor- 
tunity they have ever had to try to advance themselves. . . . 

Not only that . . . but it is more directly conservative of public 
interests that reduction of hours of work should be brought about by legal 
enactment than by the bitter, weary and destructive method of industrial 
war. (Pages 242-243.) 

Schriften der Gesellschaft fiir Sopale Reform. Heft 7-8. [Publications of 
the Social Reform Society. Nos. 7-8.] Die Herabset^ung der Arbeit- 
leit fiir Frauen und die Erhbhung des Schutialters fiir Jugendliche 



THE method: legislation 333 

Arheiter in Fabrihen. [The Reduction of Women's Working Hours GERMANY 
and the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Both industry and workpeople are to-day, in Germany, ready for a 
general establishment of the ten-hour day; but, as there will always be 
short-sighted and unintelligent employers, the limitation of working hours 
should not be left to them, but, in consideration of its vast importance, 
first for the worker but ultimately for industry and for the whole nation, 
it should be regarded as an imperative duty of the state to end all con- 
troversy by a general statute. (Page 73.) 



Royaume de Belgique. Commission du Travail. Insiituee par Arrete BELGIUM 
Royal du 15 Avril, 1886. [Royal Belgian Labor Commission, 1886.] 
Reponses au Questionnaire concernant le Travail Industriel. T. I. 
[Questions and Answers on Industrial Work. Vol. I.] Brussels, 1887. 

Question 15. As to length of hours and regulation of work of women 
and children, etc. 

Answer: 1194. . . . For many years the need of regulating the labor 
of women, children, and even adult men, in factories, mills, and work- 
places, has been acknowledged. . . . Even giving full weight to objections 
interposed on grounds of liberty ... I believe that such legislation is 
becoming more indispensable every day. . . . Without interfering with 
the needs of industry, could we not advantageously fix intervals of rest 
for adult workers, and above all for youthful workers, women and chil- 
dren. . . . (The Governor of West Flanders.) (Pages 153 and 154.) 

1195. We need legal restrictions. Simple justice demands it. 

Above all we need to prevent by legislation the excess of work to which 
I have (previously) alluded. (Countess de Stainlein-Saalenstein.) (Page 
154.) 



Royaume de Belgique. Conseil Superieur du Travail, 9^ Session. 1907. 
[Belgian Higher Council of Labor. 1907.] Reglemeniation de la 
Duree du Travail des Adultes. [Regulation of Hours of Work for 
Adults.] Brussels, 1907. 

M. G. Helleputte: 

Many wish that private initiative should effect a general reduction of 
hours. We shall not hesitate to contest this. . . . 

Private initiative, however well meaning, is not sufficient to shorten 



334 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

BELGIUM hours of work. For isolated efforts are naturally powerless to act suc- 

cessfully in opposition to competing interests and even if they could oppose 
the majority without injury, prejudices and timidity often prevent them 
from assuming the risk. The first employer, who, merely for his own 
profit, compelled his workmen to work at night, deprived them of the 
weekly day of rest and imposed exhausting hours of work on them, was 
guilty of treason to humanity; but those who came after him were not 
always free to do otherwise than he did. . . . Private initiative being 
powerless, must we resign ourselves to the existence of social wrongs: 
May we not rather appeal to the social power whose business it is to watch 
over the general interests? (Page 7.) 

The academic argument concerning the liberty of the individual would 
have much strength if the laboring man were really free to regulate the 
length of his working hours as he wished. Such liberty may be enjoyed 
by the isolated workman working for himself, but wherever men work in 
common, and above all where they work at different parts of the same 
product, the length of their working hours is regulated by the length of 
hours of their comrades, and this in turn by competition. . . . 

The single workman then has, in reality, no power to decide as to the 
length of his working day. (Page 10.) 

Les Projets de Limitation de la Duree du Travail des Adultes en Belgique. 
[Proposals regarding Limitation of Hours of Work for Adults in Bel- 
gium.] Hector Denis. No. X of the publications of the Belgian 
Section of the International Association for Labor Legislation. Liege, 
Benard, 1908. 

Agreement (in the discussion in Parliament, i896, on the report made 
by M. Van Cauwenberg on labor legislation) was unanimous as to the 
principle underlying the intervention of law in labor agreements. It was 
recognized as legitimate to prevent abuse of the laborer's strength. (Page 
6.) 

It was recognized that the individual workman's position is less inde- 
pendent than that of the employer . . . that, therefore, contract is not 
entirely free ... it was generally admitted that organization is not yet 
sufficiently well developed to equalize the workman's freedom in contract 
and no one wished to delay (until organization should become so devel- 
oped) a reform which is held to be indispensable to the conservation of 
health and to the physical and moral progress of the working population. 
(Page 6.) 



THE method: legislation 335 

Berichte der eidg. Fabrik und Bergwerkinspektoren iiher ihre Amtstdtigkeit swiTZER 
in den Jahren 1902-1903. [Reports of the (Swiss) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors. 1902-3.] Aarau, Sauerldnder, 1904. 

Women and children have profited least from the rapidly progressing 
voluntary reduction of working hours. Here it seems to me, is a sign 
pointing plainly in the direction that legislators need to take and that they 
must take. (Page 68.) 

Proceedings of the Fifth Meeting of the International Association for Labor 
Legislation. Lucerne, 1908. Proposition of the Commission on the 
Maximum Day. Herr Griesberts. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

2. In addition to the gains secured or likely to be secured by organiza- 
tion, the intervention of legislation is essential in order to make possible 
the general establishment of a maximum working day. (Page 82.) 

Massachusetts House Document. No. 185. 1852. Minority report on 2?JJ|§ 
sundry petitions for legislation limiting hours of labor. 

While the men, employed in machine shops, have political power, 
which makes them feared and enables them to demand justice, the women 
of the factories have none of this influence, and consequently are at the 
mercy of their employers. . . . The legislation of this State is nobly dis- 
tinguished for the regard which it has paid to the infirm, the insane, the 
idiotic, and the criminal. But it has done very little to preserve the 
health and strength of its own people. (Page 9.) 

Massachusetts House Document. No. 122. 1853. Minority report on 
regulation of hours of labor in establishments of incorporated corporations. 

The vast inequality of condition, as to power and influence, between 
the corporate employers and their employees, leaves no possible ground 
for hope that the hours of labor can ever be reduced by the efforts of the 
operative classes, unaided by the legislature. (Page 4.) 

In considering the expediency of the proposed legislation, it should be 
borne in mind, that the corporations are creatures of the legislature, — 
that the promotion of the public welfare was the end and aim of their 
creation, and that the stockholders have by no means an exclusive in- 
terest in their management and control. The power that created cor- 
porations is in duty bound to control them, and put them under such regu- 
lations and restrictions as will best promote the public welfare. (Page 5.) 



33^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of the New Jersey Inspector of Factories and Workshops. 1885. 

SXAT£S 

Regulation of Women's Labor. A legal regulation of the employment 
of women in manufactories has become a pressing necessity in the interest 
of justice and humanity. (Page 44.) 



Report of the New York State Factory Inspector. 1887. 

... As the law does not fortify them in their objections to overtime, 
they dare not openly protest. We think that an investigation would 
satisfy any one that ninety-five per cent of the females working in the 
State, who are over twenty-one years of age, favor a limitation, by law, 
of their hours of labor to sixty a week, and were they organized that would 
be one of the first rules they would adopt and enforce. (Page 27.) 



New Hampshire. Governor s Message, 1887. Governor Chas. H. 
Sawyer. 

While it would be unwise and contrary to the spirit of our institutions 
for the State to make laws that would interfere with the freedom of in- 
dividuals, in the transaction of a lawful business, to buy or sell when or 
where, with whom and upon such conditions as may suit their own will 
and convenience, yet it is right and proper to establish such limitations 
by general and practical laws and regulations as will serve to protect the 
worker from undue hardships, which often result from business competi- 
tion. (Page 8.) 



Report of the New York Factory Inspector. 1893. 

The tendency of the age is toward a shorter work-day for all classes of 
workers. The employees of the State and of several cities in the State 
have had eight-hour laws passed for their benefit, and the trade organiza- 
tions, composed mainly of men, are agitating for the establishment of an 
eight-hour work-day, and some of them have already succeeded in getting 
it. The others will no doubt succeed in time. But the women, who are 
a constantly increasing element in industrial life, and the children, who 
are certainly entitled to all the legal benefits possible to bestow, cannot 
organize successfully to obtain a reduction of their hours of labor, although 
from a physical standpoint, at least, they are more entitled to considera- 
tion in this direction than are the members of the trades unions as a rule. 
An illustration of the need of legislative assistance to obtain for women 



THE method: legislation 337 

and children an equal work-day with the organized members of the same united 

• • • STATES 

trades is seen in the cigarmaking business. 

The Cigarmakers' Union has for a number of years enforced an eight- 
hour work-day among its membership, which comprises a vast majority 
of the journeymen of that trade. The women and children, who are 
employed as strippers, however, who have no union, and who are the 
poorest paid workers in the trade, must work for the same employers two 
hours longer each day. Their work is just as laborious and confining as 
the actual making of cigars, and, to them, comparatively more unhealthy 
than cigarmaking is to cigarmakers. 

It will be seen from this that the women and children can only look to 
the legislature to obtain the relief which nature and existing industrial 
conditions demand for them. (Pages 25-26.) 

Report of Chief of Massachusetts District Police. 1894. 

While great reforms have been made in legislation in the last few years 
in the interest of women employed as operatives and in similar ways, there 
are special reasons why incessant vigilance must be exercised to secure 
for them adequate protection from injustice, and the best attainable sani- 
tary conditions. If any considerable number of men so employed suifer 
from preventable evils, arising from conditions adverse to their welfare 
in any respect, they have the means of immediate and sure correction. 
They may alter, amend, or make laws to remove their grievances and better 
their condition as workmen. It is not claimed that the Commonwealth 
is indifferent to the welfare of women employees, — the legislation in pro- 
tection of their rights as workwomen shows the contrary; but because they 
cannot by direct and personal effort shape the laws intended to protect 
wage-earners, it is incumbent upon us to secure the best possible conditions 
of employment for them. (Pages 75-76.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and 
Conditions of Capital and Labor Employed in Manufactures and 
General Business. Vol. VII. 1900. Testimony of Mrs. Fanny B. 
Ames, former Factory Inspector of the State of Massachusetts. 

We may find that it is desirable in time to do by law what a few persons 
are doing voluntarily. It is in that way that the original ten-hour law 
was tried tentatively in England; a few manufacturers tested the matter 
in their own factories and found that their people could do as much in ten 
hours as they theretofore had been doing in twelve and thirteen; that 
made the law seem reasonable. (Page 64.) 



338 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 

1908. Part III. Industrial Hygiene and the Police Power, Being 
a Reprint of a Paper on the Legitimate Exercise of the Police Power for 
the Protection of Health. By Henry Baird Favill, M.D. 

Voluntary effort inadequate. It is not likely that mere voluntary and 
even co-operative regulation is the best solution. Rules applied to an 
industrial establishment, which are not purely related to the immediate 
product of industry are difficult of enforcement and liable to controversy. 
There is no prospect of such general development of intelligence and co- 
operative spirit amongst employers as will ensure sufficient uniformity of 
# process. There is no way to ensure the acceptance on the part of laborers 
of conditions which may be to them distasteful, except through authority 
backed up by universal custom. There is no reasonable doubt that it is 
in the interest of employers, not only from an economic standpoint, but in 
respect to the practicability of instituting reform, that these measures be 
mandatory and the expression of a very radical state policy. (Page 483.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909. 
Woman and Child Wage-earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

Even where hours of work are shorter than those permitted by law the 
factory acts applying to them still serve a purpose. The poor economy 
of excessive factory hours is now understood; but it is a truth that has to 
be learned anew by so many employers, and there are so many particular 
and temporary exceptions to its general application that abuses, though 
infrequent, can be checked only by statute. Laundries have recently been 
made subject to factory regulation. Evidence showed that prior to this 
women were obliged to work in them beyond normal hours, and occasion- 
ally even to the limit of physical endurance. And while legislation is not 
the sole cause for the shorter working-day of women and children, and 
might not have secured this end without other assisting influences, it has 
been a potent cause, and without this legal intervention conditions in some 
industries might not have improved materially during the past century. 
(Page 53.) 

Discussions in Economics and Statistics. Vol. II. Francis A. Walker, 
Ph.D., LL. D. The Eight-hour Law Agitation. New York, Holt, 1899, 

And, in the first place, let it be said that there is no fatal objection to 
the intervention of the state in the contract for labor. The traditional 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY 339 

position of the economists in antagonism to such legislation upon prin- united 
ciple, is one which ought never to have been taken, and which cannot be 
maintained. The factory acts of England, which have become a model to 
the world, are in themselves a monument of prudent, far-seeing, truly wise 
statesmanship, which employs the powers of the State to defend its citi- 
zenship against deep and irreparable injuries, and truly helps the people 
to help themselves. . . . 

If one course gives a man a legal right to do anything, but results in 
his being so helpless, and brings him into such miserable straits that he 
can, in fact, do but one thing, and that thing which is most distressing; 
while another course, although it may keep a man somewhat within 
bounds, actually conducts him to a position where he has a real choice 
among many and good things, which course affords the larger liberty? 

. . . Theoretically, he will not work in any mill where he is not well 
treated, where the sanitary arrangements are not at least tolerable, 
where machinery is not fenced to prevent death and mutilation, and where 
the hours of labor are not kept within the limits of health and strength. 
Certainly, he will not do this if he be really free. Practically, however, 
in the absence of factory legislation, the operative will have no choice but 
to work as long as the great wheel turns, be that ten hours, as so generally 
now, or twelve or fourteen, or sixteen, as in the days before the factory 
laws; he will see his companions bruised and mangled by unguarded 
machinery; he will all the time breathe air deeply laden with poisonous 
particles or deadly gases. (Pages 380-382.) 



IV. ECONOMIC ASPECT OF REGULATION 

A. General Benefit to Commercial Prosperity 

The experience of those manufacturing countries which 
have longest had legal regulation of working hours for 
women shows that commercial prosperity is not hampered 
by such regulation. The increased efficiency of the workers 
due to shorter working hours, together with the general 
improvement of industrial communities in physique and 
morals, react so favorably upon output that commercial 
prosperity is heightened rather than impaired by legal 
limitation of hours. 



/ 



\ 



340 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXVI. 1847-1848. Reports of Inspec- 

BRITAIN r J sr 

tors of Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1848. 

Many occupiers of factories, who were originally adverse to legislative 
interference, have, again and again, stated to me that they had seen reason 
to alter their opinions; that the restriction of the labor of young persons 
and women has had a very beneficial influence upon the factory popula- 
tion, and the vast increase in the number and extent of cotton mills, which 
has taken place since 1834, is a convincing proof that it could not have 
had any injurious effects upon trade. (Page 4.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1850. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 30th April, 1850. 

I am happy to be able to give some strong proofs that the Ten Hours' 
Act has not been productive of those ruinous consequences to trade which 
some predicted would inevitably follow, and that it has not had the effect 
of deterring persons from entering into the business and investing fresh 
capital in it, whether in building new mills or in extending works already 
existing, from an apprehension that ten hours' work could not yield a 
remunerative profit. There are many instances of additional machinery 
where there was previously unemployed power, and numerous instances of 
a change in the firm, implying also new investments of capital. And if 
we take into account the vast increase since 1834, not only of cotton mills, 
but of woolen, worsted, flax, and silk factories, it may be confidently 
maintained that the legislative restrictions imposed in that year and since, 
while they have vastly improved the condition of the operatives employed 
in them, cannot be charged with having thrown impediments in the way 
of a steadily progressive improvement in all these branches of trade. 
(Pages 5-6.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XL. 1852-1853. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for Half-year ending 30th April, 1853. 

If those who in 1833 predicted (and there were some of great authority 
among our political economists who did so) the ruin of our manufacturers 
if the then proposed restrictions on factory labour were adopted, will now 
fairly and candidly look at the results of this great practical experiment 
in legislation, whether in relation to the improved condition of the factory 
workers, or to the increase of mills and to the fortunes since made in every 
department of manufacture subject to the law, they must, I think, admit 
that they have seen ground to make them pause before they in future con- 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY 34I 

demn measures for elevating the moral and social condition of the hum- great 
bier classes by the regulation of their labour, as being opposed to principle; ^^"^^^^ 
for the factory legislation has been proved to be in entire accordance with 
principle, even with that of the production of wealth, when the term prin- 
ciple is understood in an enlarged and comprehensive sense. (Page 21.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVIII. 1856. Report of Inspector oj 

Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1855. 
t^ ' ■ ■ - 
^ So far from this protection to children, young persons, and women 
having done injury to trade, all the branches subject to the law have 
prospered and as regards cotton factories to an extent that they have been 
multiplied by at least one-fourth since the Act of 1833 came into opera- 
tion. . / . The Factory Act of 1833 set the bold example to other nations 
of a great manufacturing country limiting in the face of formidable com- 
petitors the hours of labour in factories for the manufacture of textile 
fabrics. The example of England had followers on the continent. Other 
countries in which the evils of unrestricted and excessive labour in fac- 
tories had become apparent, though the evils had become apparent to the 
Governments under different circumstances from those which excited 
attention in England, acknowledged that the limitation of the hours of 
labour within moderate bounds was as necessary for the welfare of the 
population as it had proved to be in England, and might be carried out 
with as little risk to the general prosperity of the manufacturer as it had 
been in England. (Page 57.) 

A vast number of the employers of labour assert the soundness of the 
principle of limiting the duration of labour and the development of the 
principle in this country has certainly attracted followers rather than 
created opponents. . . . The factory laws were enacted for the benefit 
of the employed, but under the full persuasion that they would prove 
innocuous to the interests of the employers, that anticipation, I believe, 
has in the main been verified; and in referring to the factory laws of 
France and their operation, I speak as fully persuaded that the uniform 
application of the principle of limited interference between employer and 
employed is advantageous to both, and certainly not mischievous to the 
former. (Pages 76-77.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1859. Report of Inspector of 
Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1858. 

It is most satisfactory to reflect that the experience of nearly a quarter 
of a century has proved the wisdom of Parliament in this humane legis- 
lation; that while the condition of persons employed in factories has been 



342 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT greatly improved by their protection from excessive labour, the restric- 

tions have in no degree interfered with the prosperity of those branches of 
trade to which the Acts apply, as I shall presently show by the clearest 
evidence. ... It has been repeatedly said to me by mill owners and other 
persons living in the manufacturing districts that the Factory Acts have 
immensely improved the character, manners and general condition of the 
operatives. That they have in no way interfered with the progress and 
improvement of the branches of trade to which they apply is demonstrated 
by the following facts. . . . In 22 years the number of cotton mills is 
nearly double and the persons employed therein more than doubled; 
that the number of woollen and worsted mills has considerably decreased, 
but that the number of persons employed therein has more than doubled, 
showing that the larger mills have extinguished a considerable proportion 
of the smaller ones; that the same thing may be observed, although in a 
less degree, with regard to the flax mills; and that the number of silk 
mills has been doubled and the number of persons employed in them nearly 
so. (Pages 8-9.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1860. Report of Inspectors 
of Factories for Half-year ending October 31, 1859. 

The experience of nearly twenty-six years, extending throughout the 
whole time that the existing law has been in operation, convinces me that 
the legislative interference for the regulation of the labour of children, 
young persons, and women in factories is now viewed by a great majority 
of the occupiers of those works as having done, and as continuing to do, 
a great amount of good without any injurious interference with the pros- 
perity of their trade; and I firmly believe that if it were proposed to repeal 
the law there would be a very stout resistance on the part of masters, in- 
dependently of all consideration of the opposition that would be made by 
the operatives and of their own appreciation of the moral and social im- 
provements which the law has effected and sustains. (Page 8.) 

With regard to production, an analysis of the value of our exports in 
1858 shows an increase of £21,231,032 over 1844, when the amended 
Factory Act came into operation. Of course I am not claiming this large 
increase on account of the Factory Acts, far from it, I only quote it to show 
that production has not been interfered with by them. (Page 53.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIV. 1866. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1865. 

Moreover, to assume that so to limit the hours of labour would be to 
destroy any branch of a particular trade is to assume that we have arrived 



GENERAL BENEFIT TO COMMERCIAL PROSPERITY 343 

at the end of mechanical and chemical science, and that there remains no great 

• BRITAIN 

more capital to be expended. ... In no trade already under restriction, 
from the longest possible hours to 60 hours' work a week, has production 
been diminished, or have the interests of the masters been injuriously 
affected; whilst it has become an axiom that overwork is never good work, 
seldom profitable, and always prejudicial to the physical and moral con- 
dition of the workers. (Page 82.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories. 

In conclusion we think we may point with satisfaction to the results of 
past legislation in this direction, seeing that in spite of the opposition, and 
the deterring predictions hurled against it, our commercial intercourse and 
prosperity is extending with a corresponding increase of national wealth. 
(Page 314.) 



A Shorter Working Day. R. A. Hadfield, ofHadfield's Steel Foundry Co., 
Sheffield, and H. de B. Gibbins, M.A. London, Methuen, 1892. 

There are two very important sets of facts to be obtained upon this 
question of the previous effects of a reduction of working hours, and these 
facts come, not from Australia or any other country whose conditions 
we might grant were different from our own, but from England itself. 
We refer to the results shown in the working of the Factory Acts which 
reduced the hours of labour not by one or two, but by three, four, and even 
six hours per day, and which nevertheless, as everybody now admits, have 
been of immense benefit, not only to the working classes, but to the nation 
at large, and have caused no decline whatever in the rate of production. 
. . . During the successive reductions of working hours the price of cotton 
yarn has fallen from 25.71 pence per pound in 1821 to 12.82 pence per 
pound in 1884. (Pages 102-103.) 

As it is found that where labour is best paid that there are the best and, 
with certain qualifications, the cheapest products, so also will it probably 
be as regards reduced hours. (Page 114.) 

Le Travail de Nuit dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son importance et sa GERMANY 
reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. [Night Work 
of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and legal regula- 
tion. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] La Reglementation legale du 



344 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Travail des Femmes en Allemagne. 

Jena, Fischer, 1903. 



[German Labor Laws for IV omen.] 



Dr. Fuchs, Factory Inspector, Baden: 

No fact indicates that industry suffered any under the new regime. 
The production which had in some industries been slightly checked at 
first quickly recovered ground, thanks to the greater zeal of the workmen. 
The figures of the following table, taken from the statistics of German 
exports, do not in any case allow the assertion that the legislation exercised 
a paralyzing influence on the industry. 



Kind of goods 



Cotton goods 

Woollens 

Silks 

Vestments, lingerie, etc 
Silver plate jewelry . . . . 

Toys 

Sugar 



Value of Exports in Millions of Marks 



1S90 1891 1893 



167.7 
246.8 
175.9 
121.3 
36.1 
26.8 
216.0 



146.7 

227.8 

146.5 

67.6 

31.3 

28.4 

227.8 



154.3 

217.9 

152.6 

61.7 

23.9 

30.3 

221.2 



189Ji. 



144.8 

186.7 

103.9 

60.4 

25.4 

29.4 

209.2 



1899 



206.1 

217.2 

142.7 

92.3 

48.7 

43.0 

203.6 



1900 



244.7 

235.8 

139.5 

99.6 

73.5 

53.4 

216.3 



There resulted only certain difficulties and certain temporary disad- 
vantages for some industries. . . . The limitation of the hours of work is 
especially felt by the export houses, though it is not possible to state that 
an industry has been injured. (Pages 12, 13.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1871. 

England has found that increased leisure for the operative has brought 
increased wages, increased invention, increased production, and increased 
consumption; for there and everywhere the rule holds good, that the rise 
of wages, following the reduction in hours of work, gives a brisker market. 
There is another reason, and an important one, why there will be no di- 
minished production; and that reason is found in the fact that human 
machinery, — brain, hands, and feet, — will not, cannot work midst the 
whirl of machinery, however favorable the rooms, above a certain point 
to any productive advantage. (Page 560.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 345 

Report of the New York Factory Inspector. 1894. united 

SXA1.£S 

New York has about doubled its manufacturing resources and capacity 
in the decade referred to (1880-1890), notwithstanding the many laws 
which have been passed regulating the employment of the weaker elements 
of factory employees. To say that the passage of such laws and their 
strict enforcement injures trade or industry is a patent absurdity in the 
face of the facts shown, and is contrary to the history of all States and 
countries. . . . The gauge of the States' progressiveness and prosperity 
is not the wealth of its richest citizen, but rather the poverty of its poorest 
industrious laborer is a fairer test. When the conditions under which the 
latter strive are improved, the entire mass of citizens is benefited. There- 
fore, it is a reasonable proposition that factory laws, instead of being a 
detriment and a check to business, are in reality promoters of energy 
and productive of a greater earning and competing capacity. (Page 14.) 

Report of the New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

Fortunately, statistics are at hand which afford simple but fairly 
effective tests of the assertion that Massachusetts industries are threatened 
with ruin by restrictive labor legislation. In the first place, Massachu- 
setts' cotton industry, the business chiefly affected by short-hour laws, 
has fully kept pace with that of rival States in the North. (Page 54.) 

Certain facts appear with distinctness, one of which is that the cotton 
industry of Massachusetts has not only grown steadily throughout the 
period of short-hour legislation, but — what is far more impressive — has 
made larger gains than are shown by the adjacent States with less radical 
short-hour laws. In 1870, four years before the enactment of the ten- 
hour law, Massachusetts had 39.5 per cent of all the cotton spindles in the 
North Atlantic States; six years after the passage of that law Massachu- 
setts' proportion was 45 per cent; in 1890 it was 47.5 per cent, and in 1900 
53.5 per cent. It is difficult to see what clearer proof could be demanded 
of the beneficial results of the Massachusetts short-hour laws of 1874 
(sixty hours a week) and 1892 (fifty-eight hours). (Page 55.) 



B. Effect on Output 

The universal testimony of manufacturing countries 
tends to prove that the regulation of the working day acts 
favorably upon output. With long hours, output declines; 



346 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

with short hours, it rises. The heightened eificiency of 
the workers, due to the shorter day, more than counter- 
balances any loss of time. Production is not only increased, 
but improved in quality. 

On the other hand, with excessive working hours, out- 
put is inferior both in quantity and quality. After the 
workers become overfatigued, ''spoiled work" increases 
with each additional hour of labor. 

(1) Shorter Hours Increase Efficiency, and thus Result 
IN Superior Output. 

SJS.^'^ivr Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 74. 1844. 

Lord Ashley: 

"It is a mistaken notion," writes this Gentleman, "to suppose that the 
produce of yarn or cloth from machinery, would be curtailed in an arith- 
metical proportion to the proposed reduction of working hours from 12 to 
10, because in very many instances the workman can produce much or 
little during the day, as he feels disposed, or as his strength enables him; 
and in my own trade in which we employ at least 1200 hands, I have proved 
beyond a doubt, that whenever we have reduced the hours for working 
from 12 to 10 per day, which is equal to one-sixth the quantity of work 
produced has not fallen below one-tenth or even one-twelfth. ... All 
men will be able to work much harder for 10 hours than they can for 12." 
(Pages 901-902.) 

The countervailing advantages of reduced time are so great, as com- 
pared with a reduction of wages, that they readily accept the loss, and find 
their interest in the improvement of health of body and mind; in social 
and domestic comfort; in the practice of household economy; and es- 
pecially in the prolongation, by 3 or 4 years, of their working life, of their 
physical capacities to obtain a livelihood. (Pages 904-905.) 

Mr. Shaw: 

. . . If we were by legislation to prescribe the hours beyond which the 
weaker classes of women and young persons were not to work, we should 
name a period not greater than the ordinary day's labor of nature and 
robust men, namely 10 hours, exclusive of meals and rest. Ten hours' 
healthful and vigorous labor would yield a greater profit than 12 hours 
under the influence of overwork, and its consequent listlessness. (Pages 
1072-1073.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 347 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXV. 1845. Reports of Inspectors of great 
Factories from 1st October, 1844, to 30th April, 1845. Robert ^^'^^^ 
Gardner, Mill-owner. 

... I am quite satisfied that both as much yarn and power-loom 
cloth may be produced at quite as low a cost in 11 as in 12 hours per day; 
at least, that it has been so the last 12 months, in my mills at Preston. 
... It is my present intention to make a further reduction of time to 
lOK hours, without the slightest fear of suffering loss by it. I find the 
hands work with greater energy and spirit; they are more cheerful, and 
apparently more happy. All the arguments I have heard in favour of 
long time appear based on an arithmetical question, — if 11 produce so 
much, what will 12, 13, or even 15 hours produce? This is correct, as 
far as the steam engine is concerned; whatever it will produce in 11 hours, 
it will produce double the quantity in 22. But try this on the animal 
horse, and you will soon find he cannot compete with the engine, as he 
requires both time to rest and feed. (Page 27.) 

... It is, I believe, a fact not questioned, that there is more bad work 
made the last 1 or 2 hours of the day, than the whole of the first 9 or 10 
hours. There can be no doubt but 11 hours are quite sufficient for any 
one to exhaust the whole of his or her strength in any one occupation, 
situation, or atmosphere, although the work is not laborious. 

It can be no small gratification to any employer of a large number of 
hands to see them healthy and happy, with an opportunity of improving 
their minds. I beg to state that about 20 years ago we had many orders 
for a style of goods much wanted. To increase the quantity of the work, 
I requested they (his young women employees) would work, instead of 
11, 12 hours. At the end of the week I found they had got a trifle more 
work done; but supposing there was some incidental cause for this, I 
requested they would work 13 hours the following week, at the end of 
which they had produced less instead of more work. The overlooker told 
me the hours were too long, and invited me to be in the room with them 
the last hour of the day. I saw they were exhausted, drowsy, and making 
bad work and little of it, I therefore reduced their time 2 hours, as before. 
Since that time I have been an advocate for shorter hours of labour. 
(Page 27.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1850. Report of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending 30th April, 1850. 

I continue to receive favourable accounts of the working of the Ten 
Hours' Act. That great experiment, dangerous as it appeared to many, 



348 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT and to myself among others, because of so sudden a change from twelve 

to ten hours, has succeeded, so far as it has yet been tried, beyond what 
the most sanguine of those who were favourable to it ventured to antici- 
pate. Where the law is fully carried out, according to its true intention, 
the workpeople appear to value the limitation more and more in propor- 
tion, as they have longer experience of its effects; and the masters appear 
to be getting daily better reconciled to it; partly by finding that, by the 
increased alertness of their workpeople, by the closer application they are 
now enabled to give, together with some additional speeding of the ma- 
chinery not before tried, the produce is much nearer to that of 12 hours 
than it was conceived possible it could be brought up to, but partly also 
by the marked change for the better which they see in the health, appear- 
ance, and contentment of their workpeople. (Page 5.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIII. 1851. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1850. 

The unexpected and gratifying result mentioned in former reports of 
the amount of work turned off in 10 hours, having kept up so much nearer 
to the produce of 12 hours than was conceived by any one to be possible, 
has been confirmed by many instances stated to me during the last half- 
year. This is accomplished partly by an increased speed of the machin- 
ery, but chiefly by the closer attention which the people give to their 
work, and are enabled to give by the shortened duration of the daily 
strain upon their physical powers. (Page 5.) 

It is also worthy of note, that during a portion of the last period the 
greatest amount of restriction ever contemplated, either as to ages or as 
to hours of work, has been in operation, and making every possible allow- 
ance for the period during which the daily working hours of young persons 
and women were reduced to 11, and then to 10, the power of production 
has increased beyond that of any other period. (Page 65.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XL. 1852-1853. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for half-year ending 30th April, 1853. Letter to Leonard 
Horner from William Grant, concerning the effect of the ten-hour day. 

We employ nearly 600 hands, and out of that number I have no hesita- 
tion in saying there is not one person would prefer to work even one hour 
per week longer than they do at present. By extra attention, knowing 
that their hours are shorter than formerly, and a little increase to the 
speed, they make quite as much money as ever they did. (Pages 20-21.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 349 

British Sessional Pa-bers. Vol XXX. 1876. Factory and Workshops great 

^ , ^ . . BRITAIN 

Acts Commission. 

Witness, Phillip Grant, representing operatives: 

8582. During the agitation for the ten-hours bill in the year 1844 or 
1845 he (a cotton-spinner at Preston) reduced his time voluntarily to 
eleven hours instead of twelve, and at the end of twelve months he re- 
ported, as Mr. Hugh Mason did, that he had got a better quality of work 
and more of it in the eleven hours than he had in the twelve, and that is 
obvious to anybody who understands the process of following a machine. 
(Page 418.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report from the Select Com- 
mittee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

583. You think in the shorter hours you would do as much as in the 
longer hours? — Decidedly, we have proved that by fact under the volun- 
tary efforts when we have had the shorter hours, and although it lasted 
for some months we had no loss in drawings; the cash turnover was as 
good; and it lasted till either some one broke away, or some new start 
went into the later hours. (Page 25.) 



The Half-holiday Question. John Lilwall. London, Kent, 1856. 

... It is a well-ascertained fact that the amount of work done, 
whether in the case of a man who makes an article or of him who sells it, 
does not depend so much on the extent of time devoted to any given 
employment, as upon the degree of application, energy, and cheerfulness 
of spirit which are brought to bear thereon. The human frame and the 
human mind are so constituted that they are capable of only a certain 
amount of continued effort. Let the natural bounds be but systematically 
extended, and so far from such excess being productive, it will ordinarily 
be found that there will be really less work done than when due regard is 
paid to the capacity of the agent, and that it will also be of an inferior 
description. This statement is borne out by the experience of many 
scientific and practical, observant men, who have recorded their opinions 
on the subject. 

. . . Mr. Robert Baker, surgeon, of Leeds, also observes: 
"There is more work done now in ten hours and a half in the factories 
in England than ever was in twelve or fourteen, and there is no greater 



350 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

g^AT fallacy in the employment of physical strength than to suppose that long 

hours are conducive to its profitable use." . . . 

Mr. Leonard Horner, Government Inspector of Factories, says: 

"It will be satisfactory to you to learn that the last year has afforded 
fresh proofs that the restrictions now regulating the labour of children, 
women, and young persons in factories, which have immensely improved 
their condition in many respects, have not been attended with the in- 
jurious effects upon trade which were apprehended. . . . This is accounted 
for, partly by the increased stimulus given to ingenuity to make the 
machinery more perfect and capable of increased speed, but it arises far 
more from the workpeople, by improved health, by absence of that weari- 
ness and exhaustion which the long hours occasioned, and by their in- 
creased cheerfulness and activity, being enabled to work more steadily 
and diligently, and to economize time, intervals of rest while at their work 
being now less necessary." 

Mr. Henry Millward of the firm of H. Millward and Sons, extensive 
needle manufacturers, of Redditch, writes: 

"In reply to your note, I cannot have the slightest difficulty in your 
stating . . . the excellent effect I have found the Saturday half-holiday 
and a general short time in the week, has had on my people. I have 
adopted it now more than two years, and it is valued by the men. I have 
no hesitation in saying that my orders are got out quicker and better than 
they were previous to it." 

I think this varied testimony, considering its distinctness of character, 
and the practical and highly respectable parties from whom it emanates, 
must be admitted as conclusive by proving two points: First, that a cur- 
tailment of the period of labour does not necessarily involve a diminution 
of the work done; and secondly, that such curtailment as is advocated in 
these pages would, as a rule, be advantageous to the employers of industry. 
(Pages 34-37.) 

Lectures on the Labour Question. The Nine Hours Movement. Thomas 
Brassey. London, Longmans, 1878. 

A reduction in the hours of labour does not necessarily involve a corre- 
sponding reduction in the amount of work performed. ... A few years 
ago M. Dolfuss, the great manufacturer of Miihlhausen, offered to reduce 
the working hours in his establishment to the extent of one hour a day, 
without reduction of pay, provided his work-people would undertake to 
do an equal amount of work in the shorter day. In a month after the 
offer was made the hands in the employ of M. Dolfuss had succeeded in 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 351 

making the production of the shorter day equal in amount to the pro- great 
duction of their former longer hours. (Pages 9-10.) 

Overwork is equally undesirable in a moral and an industrial point of 
view. Adam Smith has said truly that the man who works so moderately 
as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, 
but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of work. 
(Page 12.) 



Factory Act Legislation. The Cohden Priie Essay for 1891. Victorine 
Jeans. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. 

"The great improvements," wrote one of the inspectors in 1858, 
"made in machines of every kind have raised their productive power 
very much. Without a doubt the shortening of the hours of labor . . . 
gave the impulse to these improvements. The latter, combined with the 
more intense strain on the workman, have had the result that at least as 
much is produced in the shortened (by 2 hours, or one-sixth) working day 
as was previously during the longer run." 

We may fairly conclude, then, that the first result of the Factory Act 
was this — it fostered the growth of the factory system. 

. . . The second great result, — the increase in the vigor and intelli- 
gence of the laborer, and therefore, to some extent at least, in his capacity 
for work. . . . It is perfectly certain that a fair portion of the increased 
production may quite justly be put down to the improved physical and 
mental energy of the mill-hands themselves. That was Lord Shaftes- 
bury's great argument. ... He brought forward a great many cases of 
equal or increased production arising simply from improved vigor on the 
part of the workmen in mills where owners had voluntarily reduced their 
hours by way of experiment. 

" I could not understand," one master wrote, "how it was that our men 
could turn off as much work (and some a little more) in 11 hours as ever 
they did in 12. I said to one of them, 'John, will you tell me how it is 
that you can do more work in 11 hours than you did in 12?' 'Why,' said 
he, 'we can lay to in 11 hours a day better than we could in 12, because we 
get more rest at night and we are in better spirits all the day through, and 
besides, the afternoons were not so long. ' " 

"He could spin, he said, 10 years longer if Mr. G. would keep on 11 
hours." . . . 

The truth is, there is a law of "Diminishing Returns" from labor as 
from land. . . . Dr. Cunningham's verdict is concise and to the point. 
"There is an amount of tension," he writes, "which the human frame can 



352 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT bear, and to prevent men from going beyond it was really to establish the 

textile industries of Great Britain on a far firmer economic basis." Fac- 
tory legislation thus helps forward production in the textile industries m 
two ways: by hastening the development of production on a large scale 
or the factory system, and, secondly, by heightening the efficiency of each 
individual worker. But . . . the first result has always a certain ten- 
dency to weaken the force of the latter. (Pages 31-34.) 



Eight Hours for JVork. By John Rae. London, Macmillan, 1894. 

Short hours carry with them general habits of briskness, which are 
communicative, and soon pervade the whole establishment. Work is 
more continuous during the whole day. (Page 116.) 

Men need leisure, and if they are not granted it, nature will evidently 
take her revenge by wasting in the end more genuine working time than 
the length of the relaxation she is denied. (Page 121.) 

The world takes a long time to appreciate adequately the enormous 
productive value of mere contentment and cheerfulness of mind. . . . 
One of the first and most marked effects of shortening hours has been the 
greater satisfaction and cheerfulness which the laborers feel in their work. 
They come back to it in the morning with a new spring and relish and they 
leave it in the evening with hope and spirit. . . . The cheerful mind carries 
a spontaneous vigor into labor, and dispenses with much of th^ necessity 
of constant superintendence and goading. (Pages 123-125.) 



The Economic Journal. Vol. XVIII. 1908. London. Gaps in our 
Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins. 

There is a great mass of evidence which tends to show that labour 
carried on for comparatively short hours, under the best sanitary condi- 
tions, and for high wages, eliminating the competition of child labour, is 
very much more productive than is the work of sweated industries, where 
the opposite conditions prevail. (Page 221.) 

It may be remarked that in non-textile factories it has for some time 
been customary not to work the full legal hours. About nine hours is the 
rule, for instance, in the Birmingham brass works; an employer in this 
trade once very kindly explained to me in detail how it was that he found 
it actually bad economy to keep going more than nine hours, because the 
girls could not keep their attention fixed longer, made more "scrap" and 
wasted material. (Page 223.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 353 

Reports of the Inspectors of Factories, for the Province of Ontario, Canada, Canada 
1903. Toronto, 1904. 

As a rule the working hours are well observed. In many factories 
they begin work at 7.30 or 8 a. m., quitting at 5.30 or 6. The owners of 
these establishments have assured me that they get as much work out of 
their help by giving them easy hours. (Page 31.) 



Verhandlungen des Reichstags, 101. Sitiung. 16. April, 1891. [Proceed- 
ings of the {German) Reichstag, 101st Session, April 16, 1891.] 

It has sometimes been assumed, perhaps too optimistically, that short- 
ening hours of work would effect a very considerable diminution of the 
unemployed. The latest statistics prove that this would not result in the 
degree formerly expected, as, by dint of more intensive labor and improved 
machinery a part of the time so lost in output is made up. Yet there will 
always be some part formerly produced under an 11 and 12 hour day 
which will not be made up, so that a certain proportion of additional labor 
will always be required, and to this extent diminution of the unemployed 
will follow. That will, of course, mean some little falling off in profits, but 
of insignificant extent, as is shown by the statistics of various other coun- 
tries. In Switzerland, for instance, with the shorter day production fell 
off, at first, at the most, in some few instances, from 4, 5, or 6 per cent; 
in some industries, however, only a bare 1 per cent. It is only a question 
therefore of an unimportant percentage (a couple of per cent) loss for the 
business. (Pages 2363-2364.) 



Amtliche Mittheilungen aus den fahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XVIII. 1893. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, 1894. 

In most establishments the working day was eleven hours, but the ten- 
hour day was introduced in certain ones. The shorter day turned out 
well in all cases. (Liegnitz.) 

In a cigar-box and wrapper-mould factory all adult workers were given 
uniform working hours in summer and winter, — a nine-hour day, from 
seven to six, with two hours free time at noon. The owner asserts that 
in this shorter time no less work is done than formerly in the longer time, 
the eleven-hours day. (Kassel.) (Page 155.) 
23* 



GERMANY 



354 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GESMANY ^i>^d. for the year 1895. 

The reports of amount and value of the work done in the reduced work- 
ing day are also of interest. The fact that the value of the work is not in 
proportion to the hours of work is but slowly understood. A wool factory 
reduced their working day by one hour, in accordance with the law of 
June 1, 1891; subtracting the rest periods, it now amounts to ten and one- 
half hours. The owners assert that the amount and value of work done 
by both males and females remain the same, while calls upon the sick 
fund have greatly diminished. (Page 370.) 

Ihid. for the year 1898. 

In one laundry in Plauen, where the hours of the workers have been 
reduced from eleven to ten hours, it has been proved that the women 
accomplish fully as much as before this reduction. In a jute spinning 
and weaving factory in Cassel the ten-hour day was provisionally intro- 
duced at the request of the hands in September. Thus far it has worked 
so well that the shorter day will probably be retained. (Page 106.) 

Jahreshericht der Grossheriogliche Badischen Fabrikinspektion fiir das 
Jahr 1901. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden. 1901.] 
Karlsruhe, Thiergarten, 1902. 

The chemical works in Durlach resolved not to dismiss any workmen 
in a certain slack season, shortening the hours of labor instead. But the 
expected decrease in output did not occur, so that occasional closing for a 
day had to be resorted to. After this experience the firm resolved to 
retain the shorter hours even in recurring seasons of full orders, believing 
that they can institute an even shorter day without any reduction of prod- 
uct worth speaking of. (Page 22.) 

Jahresherichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich IViirttemherg 
fiir das Jahr 1901. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemherg, 1901.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1902. 

The productivity of the workers in the (previously mentioned) trades 
where shorter hours have been established has not fallen with the reduced 
hours of work, and thereby fresh proof has been given that the quantity 
of output does not rise and fall with length of working hours. (Page 13.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 355 

I hid. for the year 1902. GERMANY 

Special report made on questions as to the possibility of shortening 
hours. 

Industry would suffer no injury from shortening the working day for 
women by an hour. (Legal day 11 hours.) Such a reduction would 
finally bring about a general 10-hour day in all industries where men's 
and women's work was correlated, and, while some diminution of product 
and wages might take place for a time, output would finally be restored to 
its former level by greater activity and improved devices, and wages would 
also tend to return to their previous rate. (Page 179.) 

Ihid. for the year 1903. 

Many employers corroborate the assertion that 11 hours work is far 
too much for working women, by the fact that the 11th hour of the day 
does not show an Uth part of the output, a proof of the relaxation of zeal 
and energy and the overstrain under which the 11th hour is finished. . . . 
Ten hours of intensive work day by day for the week, is enough, consider- 
ing that modern machinery requires the greatest possible attention, to 
use up all the strength that a woman has at her command. (Page 139.) 

Jahresberichie der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsheamten und Bergbehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1903. Bd. I. Preussen. [Annual Reports of the {German) 
Factory and Mine Inspectors for 1903. Vol. I. Prussia.] Berlin, 
Decker, 1904. 

The so-called English time has been introduced in several shoe factories: 
The resultant reduction from 10 to 9}i hours has not brought about any 
reduction in output. Employers and workers are both pleased. (Page 
219.) 

Employers seem more and more inclined to establish the ten-hour day; 
various mills which formerly had long hours, have adopted the ten-hour 
day without having experienced any disadvantage; others intend to in- 
troduce it. (Page 275.) 

The prejudice against a ten-hour day is fast disappearing, as it comes to 
be understood that the productivity of the worker in the eleventh hour is 
proportionately low. (Page 295.) 

Ibid, for the year 1905. Vol. I. {Prussia.) 

The experiments mentioned in last year's report, by two of the largest 
industries in the district [a rubber works of the General Electric Company 



35^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY at Oberspree and Borsig's smithworks] reducing the hours of labor re- 
spectively from 10 to 9 and from 9}4 to 8>^ hours, have been declared to 
be thoroughly satisfactory. (Page 1.^°') 

The efforts of workingmen to obtain shorter hours of work are con- 
tinually resulting in success. Hours of 9, 8><, 8>^ or even 8, daily, are 
now not at all uncommon in Frankfurt A. M. The employers are in 
general not opposed, as they fmd that the output of the shorter day is 
quite equal to what it was before. (Page I.^^^*) 

Ihid, for the year 1906. Vol II. (Baden.) 

Many reductions of the hours of labor in women employing industries 
are reported for the current year. The entire textile industry of Wiesen- 
thal has adopted the ten-hour day in response to vigorous demands. 
(Page 5.33") 

(For additional examples see also pages 2.^^ and 4.^^"^^') 

Ibid, for the year 1907. Vol. III. {Hesse.) 

An important example of reduced hours .while wages remained the 
same was given last year by the biggest employer in the district. (C. 
Heyl.) Now, also, the large leather works of Doerr and Reinhart have 
carried out their long contemplated plan of a shorter working day, with 
the result that 4,615 leather workers or about one-third of the entire 
working population of Worms have gained the advantage of an 8^ hours 
working day. 

The firm has come to the conclusion that a more economical use of 
machine power, daylight, and working time will be attained, quite aside 
from the benefit to the men. With day wages raised somewhat, the work- 
man will earn quite as much as before, or even rather more. With punc- 
tuality in beginning and stopping work the pieceworkers will produce 
and will earn as much as before. (Pages 6.^^ and ^^') 

Jahresberichte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich IVurtiemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1905. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of Wiirttemherg, 1905.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1906. 

Earlier fears that the Saturday half holiday would bring reduced output 
and lower wages have not been realized. 

The unanimous verdict of the employers affected by the Saturday 
closing is rather a repetition of the opinions given upon the shorter working 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 357 

day — that the working capacity of the women improves with the shorter Germany 
hours, and that, as a result, the interests of neither employer nor employee 
are damaged. (Page 41.) 

Many employers say that, with shorter hours, "blue Monday" has 
almost disappeared, and that men are more punctual. Amount of pro- 
duction is hardly if any less, and the saving in light and heat is consider- 
able. (Page 51.) 



International Conference in Relation to Labor Legislation. Berlin, 1890. 

Alone, the nations hesitate to reduce the hours of work for fear of 
competition, although, with modern machinery, experience has abun- 
dantly proved that the countries with the shortest working day attain the 
maximum of production. These are the countries that produce under 
good conditions most cheaply; that are most prosperous, and most feared 
as competitors in the world's markets. (Page 88.) 



Archiv fUr Sopale Geset^gebung und Statistik. Bd. VI. 1893. Bin Ex- 
periment mit dem Achtstundentage. [An Experiment with the Eight 
Hour Day.] Dr. Otto Pringsheim. Berlin, 1893. 

That production remains at the same height when working time has 
been reduced by 18.4 per cent has been recently proved in Holland. In 
a cigar-factory in Gouda, with 26 workers (7 of these minors), the hours 
in accordance with the law passed in 1889 were shortened from 11^ to 9>2. 
At the end of 1890 it was shown that the output was even greater than 
before and the wages as high also — in some cases higher. (Page 14.) 



Hours and IVages in Relation to Production. Lujo Brentano. Trans- 
lated by Mrs. Wm. Arnold. London, Sonnenschein, 1894. 

Where, however, a rise in the standard of life has come about as a con- 
sequence of increased wages and shorter hours, experience shows that it 
induces greater intensity of labour, since men whose requirements are 
larger and their hours shorter are compelled to greater industry, and that 
at the same time it makes that intensive labour possible, owing to the fact 
that favourable bodily circumstances and greater pleasure in labour 
make the greater industry easier to such workmen than to those whose 
requirements are small and who are badly nourished, weary, and depressed. 
(Page 48.) 



358 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Handhiich der Hygiem . Bd.8^. [Handbook of Hygiene. Vol. 8^.] Edited 
by Dr. Theodore Weyl. Allgemeine Gewerbehygiene und Fabrik- 
gesetigebung. [General Industrial Hygiene and Factory Legislation.] 
Dr. Emil Roth. Jena, 1894. 

It is found to be a fact that workmen often produce 50 per cent more in 
the first half of their working day than in the last half. (Page 27.) 

Die Arbeiterjrage. [The Problem of Labor.] Dr. Heinrich Herkner. 
Berlin, Guttentag, 1894. 

Chap. I, Part III. The relation of wages and hours to production. 

The raising of wages and the reduction of hours which have taken 
place in the last few decades are not due solely to state intervention and 
the pressure of labor unions. Increasing competition at home and abroad 
continually demands increasing efficiency. Experience has proved that 
really good work can be permanently given only by well paid workmen 
who are not overworked. Schoenhof and von Schultze-Gaevernitz have 
amply demonstrated that the heightened demands made upon the work- 
man by the pressure of competition in the markets of the world have also 
been instrumental in procuring more favorable conditions for him. Keen- 
sighted employers have long understood that the highly paid workers, not 
the cheap ones, are the most economical ones in the long run. Similar 
experiences have been collected in regard to hours. Under modern con- 
ditions of production it is not the long, exhausting work day of 13-14 
hours, but the moderate day of 8-10 hours, that yields the best output. 
(Page 186.) 

So, in every instance where wages have been raised and hours reduced 
it has been proved that none of the fears of those opposed to the change 
have been realized. (Page 187.) 

Archiv fiir Unfallheilkunde, Gewerbehygiene, und Gewerbekrankheiien. 
Bd. J. Uber den Gesundheitsschuti der Gewerblichen Arbeiter. [Pro- 
tection of the IVorkingman's Health.] Dr. Schaefer. Stuttgart, Enke, 
1896. 

Occupation hygiene teaches us that after brief over-exertion the repro- 
duction of working strength ceases, and a rapid descent to incapacity 
takes place. It has been thoroughly demonstrated by observations last- 
ing over a long period of time that the workman produces, on an average, 
almost twice as much in the first half of his working hours as in the last 
half of his day. (Page 204.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 359 

Schriften der Gesellschaft fur Soiiale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publications of Germany 
the Social Reform Society, Nos. 7 and 8.] Die Herahsetiung der Ar- 
heitsieit fiir Fraiien and die Erhohung des Sclmtialters fiir Jugendliche 
Arheiter in Fabrike?i. [The Reduction of Women's Working Hours 
and the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Such reduction of working hours as is absolutely necessary for con- 
servation of health and of the intellectual and moral riches of civilization 
is also a mandate of economic good management. Those potential sources 
of energy whose misuse is prevented will be thereby preserved and main- 
tained in higher eificiency for production instead of being lost to it by 
premature ruin. (Pages 48-49.) 

All the known instances of a systematic reduction of working hours 
both at home and abroad, whether by voluntary action or as a result of 
legislation, show indubitably that no ill results have followed either to the 
output or to the workers. 

Output and wages have remained the same, or have actuaily risen as a 
consequence of heightened energy and perfected plants. (Page 73.) 

Le Travail de Nuit dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son importance et sa 
reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. [Might Work 
of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and legal regu- 
lation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] La Reglementation legale du 
Travail des Femmes en Allemagne. [Labor Legislation for Women in 
Germany.] Dr. Fuchs, Factory Inspector, Baden. Jena, Fischer, 
1903. ' ^ 

Before the enactment of the German Imperial Law of 1891 restricting 
the hours of labor of women there, overtime work was already, in the in- 
dustries concerned, occasional and irregular. The very great majority of 
the establishments affected were working regularly eleven hours a day or 
less as early as 1892. 

Not one fact indicates that industry suffered under the restriction. 
The output, which, in a few establishments, diminished at first, soon re- 
gained its normal dimensions, thanks to the greater energy evinced by the 
employees. (Page 12.) 

Gesammelte Abhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete Works. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschaftliche Bedeiitung der Verkiiriung des Industriellen 
Arbeitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 



360 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY Ernst Abbe. Paper read before the Political Society at Jena in 1901. 

Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

Beside the effect on production and international competition involved 
in shorter working hours, the question arises as to the effect of a shorter 
day on the workman's strength. If he produces as much in shorter hours, 
does he do this at the cost of his reserve energy? In a word, does he use 
up his strength sooner by more intensive work? If he did, this fact would 
be of far-reaching social and economic import. (Page 204.) 

The experiment made in the optical works in whose management 1 had 
a part, and where the working day was abruptly reduced from a 9 to an 8 
hourday at a time of the most active production, . . . confirms, in the most 
important and leading points, all that the far more extensive experiences of 
England had demonstrated as to the effect of shorter hours on output. 

Our researches proved that this reduction from 9 to 8 hours, that is, of 
more than 10 per cent at one bound, brought about not the least diminu- 
tion of the daily output, but increased it demonstrably even if only to a 
slight extent: ... It would not be worth while to add our testimony to 
that of England, if it were not for the fact that we worked out our results 
in exact figures. (Page 205.) 

Our inquiries have this further credit, that they give a decisive answer 
to the question: Does reduction of hours mean a greater expenditure of 
strength for the individual? Is the work more wearing to the workman 
or not? 

Our observations enable us to reply with certainty in the negative: 
the workmen are subjected to no greater strain by executing in 8 hours 
what they used to do in 9, although they do, certainly, work with greater 
intensiveness during the shorter period. We gained an insight into the 
actual factors that enable efficiency to rise with shorter hours, and to rise 
in such degree that the results are the same. To the question whether 
the difference is accounted for by such special motives as good will or 
ambition for personal interest (as in piece work), we say, decidedly: no. 
The satisfactory result is obtained independently of such motives. And 
I regard this as one of the most important points that our experience has 
brought to light. 

Finally, our observations have enabled us to explain the connection 
between rapidity of work and shorter working hours, and to show how the 
equalizing of efficiency is brought about. I am under the impression that 
this has never been explained. (Page 206.) 

Our working hours were first reduced gradually through a period of 
30-35 years, from 12 hours to 9, then to 8. ... 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 361 

Some slight differences in output were noticeable from the standpoint Germany 
of the age of workers, but so insignificant that they are negligible. The 
youngest workmen had, to be sure, the best results, yet in no instance 
was there any lagging worth mentioning among the older ones. (Page 
211.) From our results it may be concluded: Success under shorter hours 
is attained equally, with but slight variations, by older and younger work- 
men. (Page 212.) 

The testimony of different individuals on time work agreed that after 
the first few days no conscious effort had to be made to keep up the pace 
of work. . . . Many were unconscious that they had done more until I 
proved it to them. . . . All, even the older ones, averred that the work 
was not more wearing; the last half-hour was not harder than before. 
(Page 218.) 

Piece workers, who, at first, made an effort that they could not keep 
up, found that they had at first in reality attempted to. do much more 
than they had ever done before. After relaxing to the pace that was 
permanently endurable, they discovered that their output and earnings 
were the same as previously, or slightly more. (Page 219.) 



{Condensed from original) 

f 

1. Reduction of working hours is not followed by a reduction of output. 
Frequently a distinct increase in output results. In our works, in a year, 
30 men have done as much under the 8 hours as 31 men had done in the 
year before under 9 hours. (Page 222.) 

2. In spite of good will and obvious self-interest, increased output is 
only temporarily attainable by lengthening the hours of work, and after 
a short time the output under lengthened hours falls back to what it was 
in the shorter day. 

3. Even where workmen have no interest in doing as much in the shorter 
hours; where on the contrary they have interests in not doing as much, 
nevertheless the same result is obtained: — no diminution of product occurs. 

4. This seems to me conclusive evidence that the rate of speed (short 
working hours resulting in heightened intensity and long ones in diminished 
intensity) is an automatic and involuntary adjustment not realized by 
the individual; that many persons have no idea of it, and indeed do not 
believe it until the proofs that they have accomplished more in a short day 
are shown to them. (Page 223.) 

In saying that recuperation must equal fatigue, I am speaking of real 
things. . . . We may discern three plainly separable factors in the pro- 



362 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GERMANY duction of fatigue, and these, when added together, make an important 
total. 

I. The first is the amount of the daily output, quite independent of 
the time in which it is produced. When, for instance, a man at a turning 
lathe, one who is distinctly skilful, has about 50 similar objects to make, 
he must make a certain number of motions of the hand in sequence and 
must exercise a certain number of sense perceptions in order to control his 
work. He needs also to exercise a certain number of impulses of the will. 
Now, if instead of 50 objects he makes 100, then he has done all these 
things twice as often — quite independent of whether he has worked 5, 6, 
or 10 hours. 

The amount of output gives an estimate by which to measure the 
amount of strength expended. This is different with different persons. 
Greater experience, skill, or quickness enables one to work with less ex- 
penditure of strength than another. . . . Yet on the whole, with persons 
who are working under similar conditions, there is always a large number 
whose expenditure of strength in the daily working hours is wholly pro- 
portionate to the amount of their output. 

II. The second factor in fatigue depends on the speed with which work 
is done. In general it might be supposed that when a given piece of work 
was performed in a shorter time, a greater exertion of strength would be 
necessary. But this is only true beyond certain limits. Within certain 
reasonable limits, the same piece of work can be done somewhat faster 
without increased outlay of strength. If, for instance, one walks, say, 
four kilometres, it is quite the same whether one walks a little faster or 
slower, so long as one does not actually run. This second factor, speed, is 
an important one in producing the same result with a shorter work day. 
(Page 229.) 

III. The third, however, is the most important, in my opinion, and is 
entirely analogous with what is called in technical language concerning 
machinery, "waste of power," when the machines are running dead. 
( Kraft verbrauch fiir Leergang.) . . . 

The consequence of the previously mentioned division of labor is 
that, with few exceptions, all details of industry are performed by persons 
who must either sit or stand all day; few have any chance for change with- 
in the limits of their working time. If we picture to ourselves what it 
would be for a man to be obliged to sit, or stand, without doing any work, 
but maintaining a fixed position of the body for 8 or 10 hours, we know 
at once that he would be fatigued even though he had done nothing. My 
contention is that, as this fatigue represents an outlay of strength required 
solely by sitting or standing in the position needed by his work, and in the 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 363 ' 

environment of work (with noise, confusion, the need of attention to Germany 
protect himself and others from danger) — as this purely passive fatigue, 
1 repeat, forms a large part of the day's work, every reduction of hours 
which results in concentrating the usual output within the shorter work- 
ing day is a clear gain for the worker's strength. 

If a man can do a certain day's work in 8 hours, and he is compelled 
to spend 10 hours at it, then it is just as if we said to him: you may do 
your work in 8 hours, but then you must sit here for 2 hours more, in the 
same position, listening to the same noise, paying the same attention, 
being careful to avoid danger, but without doing anything. And 1 
maintain that, just as the shorter time has been a definite saving for 
the "wasted power" of the machine, so the shorter day is a corre- 
sponding saving of human strength, avoiding a waste of power in men. 
(Page 230.) 

The length of working hours, therefore, comes up for consideration 
three times — twice in estimating the expenditure of energy (1. Shortened 
hours and increased intensity: exertion the same if certain limits of speed 
are not exceeded. 2. In estimating the "wasted power" of man, analogy 
with the machine), and thirdly in considering recuperation (shorter work 
— longer time for rest). (Page 232.) 

Without pressing mathematical conclusions further it is evident that, 
when this relation of work to rest is correctly grasped, the shorter day not 
only leaves the day's output unchanged, but may improve it. (Page 232.) 

It must be true that, if we could accurately gauge the mathematical 
relation, we would find that there was an "Optimum" for each person, 
namely, the shortest possible time in which the largest possible product 
could be achieved. Where this lies will depend largely upon the thorough- 
ness with which the single elements of fatigue are studied. 

How great the outlay of strength in lost time, wasted energy, and speed 
is in individual cases, is essentially a question of investigation. (Page 
232.) 

Berichte der eidg. Fabrik und Bergwerkinspektoren uber ihre Amistdtigheit switzer- 
in den Jahren 1898-1899. [Reports of the (Swiss) Factory and Mine ^ 
Inspectors. 1898-1899.] Aarau, Sauerldnder, 1900. 

The reduction of hours from 12 to 11 has justified itself; it has had none 
but good results; it has contributed largely to restore order and regularity 
to industry. 

The adversaries of the 11-hour day who predicted the total ruin of 
many industries have had to abandon their prejudices; they now see, as 



364 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

swiTZER- we do, that instead of being ruined our industries are developing in a 
most gratifying way. We hope soon to have a similar experience with 
the 10-hour day. 

The man who works 11 hours per day will probably produce more on a 
given day than he who works 10, but this advantage is more apparent 
than real, and vanishes with time, since prolonged work results in fatigu- 
ing the workman. 

Workers who are overstrained by long hours are less efficient and less 
skilful than others, and in the end they produce less. 

, . . It is also an incontestable fact that reduction of hours has a good 
moral effect. It is generally admitted by employers that the deplorable 
habit of not working on Monday is tending to disappear more and more 
among the employees with reduced hours of work. (Page 146.) 

An das ScToweii. Industriedepartement. Bern. Die Eidgenossischen 
Fahrikinspektoren. [Report of the Swiss Factory Inspectors to the 
Swiss Department of Labor on the Revision of the Factory Laws.] 
Schaffhausen, 1904. 

. . . We have to examine the effects of shorter hours upon our industry 
to find out whether they can be introduced without injury to business. 
The statements and opinions expressed by the various factory inspectors 
in the course of recent years, as to the results of experience in shortening 
the working hours wherever this has been tried, have brought us to the 
conclusion that a generally shorter day may be introduced without injury. 
(Page 23.) 

It will be readily seen that these two questions, — the extension of 
legislation to workers now unprotected by law and the reduction of work- 
ing hours are the most important for revision. As to the latter we here 
state our conviction that Swiss industry is well able to substitute a ten- 
hour for an eleven-hour day. This has indeed been done in the majority 
of factories now subject to the law and is moreover required by law in 
various cantons without, indeed, having brought ruin upon industry. 
(Pages.) 

In no case where the 10-hour day has been introduced is there any 
tendency to return to the 11 hours, because both employers and workers 
find advantages in the shorter time. Not only from individual branches 
of industry, but even from the ranks of the cotton factory owners, who 
constituted the majority of the opposition, the sentiment of all who have 
established the 10-hour day is favorable to it. (Page 26.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 365 

Bulletin de VOffice du Travail. Ministere du Commerce, de V Industrie, FRANCE 
des Pastes, et des Telegraphes. Paris, 1903. [Bulletin of the {French) 
Labor Office, 1903.] 

There are establishments in which it may be affirmed, according to the 
statement of a district inspector of Nantes, that the production per hour 
increases as the number of hours per day decreases. These are the in- 
dustries in which the personal qualities of the worker are an important 
factor in production. (Page 807.) 

La Revue Socialiste. T. XLL Jan.-juin. 1905. La Journee de Huit 
Heures. [The Eight Hour Day.] Etienne Buisson. Paris. 

The seemingly paradoxical result of equal production with shorter 
hours of work can be attained, at least to a certain degree, in industries 
where human labor plays the most important part, — in a word, in all 
those lines where the worker is not simply an attendant for a machine 
which performs the work. In such industries the product may remain 
equal, in spite of shorter hours, by reason of the worker's increased appli- 
cation to the work. This augmentation of output is quite possible. 
Physical strength and concentrated attention cannot be exerted during 
10 or 11 hours with equal intensity. According to the time of day, or 
the feelings of the moment, the worker has more or less energy for his 
work; nevertheless he is human; he is not a machine, and he is liable to 
ups and downs. Then, in the workshop itself there are causes for dis- 
traction; in brief, without going into details, there are various causes for 
inattention, or interruption, which constitute a waste time or a loss of 
output. These losses in many trades may easily make a total of 45 min- 
utes, or an hour, or even more in a day of 10 or 11 hours. This is true of 
day work; and a comparison of day work with piece work in the same kind 
of trade will always prove it. (Pages 642, 643.) 

La Revue de Paris. T. V. Sept.-Oct., 1907. La Journee de Huit Heures. 
[The Eight Hour Day.] Maxime Leroy. 

In his testimony during this inquiry (1902) M, Grillet, a factory in- 
spector in Brittany, said: "If we do not go below a certain limit, say 8, 
9, or 10 hours, according to the different industries, we find that the re- 
duction of working hours has produced no appreciable loss of production, 
and on the other hand, it has brought about an often striking improve- 
ment in the quality of the product." 

He adds: "It is certain that in proportion as working hours lengthen, 



366 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE the hourly output of the worker diminishes. What does the employer 

want to have from his employee? Work, not simply his presence during 
so much time. And what does the employer need to do? To utilize the 
workman's strength to the best advantage." (Pages 838, 839.) 



UNITED 

STATES 



Maine Senate Document 19: Public Documents, 1848. Re-port on Petition 
praying passage of law making ten hours legal day's work. 

Everyone knows by observation and experience, that a man can endure 
a certain amount of labor every day, and that he must have a certain 
amount of rest; and that if he is compelled to toil on day after day from 
early morning till late at night, he may for a few days do more work, but 
if long continued, he actually becomes unable to accomplish as much per 
day as he could do if permitted to divide his time more equally. . . . And 
your committee are firmly of the opinion, from all the facts and informa- 
tion they can procure, that men accomplish more work in ten hours, where 
that system is reduced to practice, than where they work as long as they 
can see. (Pages 2-3.) 

Report oj the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics oj Labor. 1870-1871. 

A man can work ten hours in the mill, and working with a will, and with 
the object of gaining one hour for himself, he will make a machine produce 
in ten hours as much as it will in eleven. He would be more attentive 
and try to make as much pay as in eleven hours. 1 think it will be found 
that much of the cloth made during the eleventh hour is of poorer quality 
than the rest, and that the necessity of looking it over the next day and 
fixing it all night, lessens the product of that next day. If we were to 
suppose two sets of operatives in the same business, one working 11 hours 
and one working 10 a day, other things being equal, there is no doubt 
that the 10-hour set would hold out more years than the 11-hour set. I 
certainly believe that the productive capacity of a set of work-people 
may be lessened by increasing the hours of their daily labor. (Pages 
499-500.) 



Argument oj Hon. William Gray on Petitions for Ten-Hour Law before 
The Massachusetts Committee on Labor. February 13, 1873. Boston. 

There are facts which . . . will show you . . . the actual result of 
the introduction of ten hours nearly six years ago. This corporation 
entered upon that change in June, 1867. (Page 17.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 367 

The speed of the looms was increased about four per cent the first united 

STATES 

month, and other machinery in about the same ratio. All work which 
could be made job work was so made . . . and the first month after the 
change showed these results. 

Observe the time had been reduced from 10^ hours to 10 hours; the 
product was reduced 4 to 5 per cent; the cost of labor was increased lyi 
per cent; the wages paid were not essentially changed. In three years 
and a half from the time of the change, the product of ten hours was fully 
equal to the product of 10^ hours at the previous date. . . . With no 
material change in machinery, the following results appeared. . . . 

First. We saw an improvement in the operatives directly after adopt- 
ing ten hours, — which improvement has been going on; and we have now 
the best set of workers that have been in the mill for fifteen years. . . . 

Second. We have had more continuous and uninterrupted work 
throughout the year than before. (Page 18.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1873, 

The overseer (of Pemberton Mills, Lawrence) informed us that they 
took the result of every half-hour's work, and upon inquiring the relative 
product of the different hours, he assured us that invariably the last hour 
was the least productive. (Page 246.) 

Hon. William Gray, Treasurer of the Atlantic Mills, Lawrence, began 
the ten-hour experiment with the operatives in his employ, June, 1867, 
and his testimony concerning its practical and financial success may be 
regarded as nearly, if not quite, authoritative and decisive. 

Massachusetts Senate Documents, No. 33. 1874. 

The Committee on the Labor Question to whom was referred so much 
of the Governor's address as relates to Labor Reform, having considered 
so much thereof as pertains to the enactment of a ten-hour law, and hav- 
ing also considered the petition of Wendell Phillips and others for the 
passage of such a law. Report: . . . Your Committee find that the manu- 
facturers of Fall River voluntarily adopted ten hours as the length of 
time their operatives should work, and continued on this basis for twenty- 
one months. They ceased only because the other manufacturers in the 
State would not adopt the same regulation. They find further, that the 
Atlantic Mills, in Lawrence, have long been run on these hours, and in 
both these instances the corporations have paid large dividends. Your 
Committee, therefore, are of the opinion that while the lessening of the 
hours of labor as contemplated may reduce the profits, it will not diminish 



368 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED them SO much as to prevent a fair and honorable return for the capital 

STATES • 

invested, and that the question seems to be, whether the health, intelli- 
gence, and morals of a large class of the women and children of the Com- 
monwealth shall be sacrificed in order that the manufacturers opposed 
to this measure may reap, not large and paying dividends, but as large as 
are received when the hours of labor are more. (Page 2.) 

Report of Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1881. 

It is apparent that Massachusetts with ten hours produces as much 
per man or per loom or per spindle, equal grades being considered, as other 
States with eleven and more hours; and also that wages here rule as high, 
if not higher, than in the States where the mills run longer time. (Page 
457.) 

But perhaps the most emphatic testimony is that of another carpet 
mill employing about twelve hundred persons. This mill, which has been 
running but ten hours for several years, and has during this period tried 
the experiment of running overtime, gives the following results. The 
manager said, " I believe, with proper management and supervision, the 
same help will produce as many goods, and of superior quality, in ten 
hours as they will in eleven. I judge so from the fact that during certain 
seasons, being pushed for goods, we have run up to nine o'clock, and for 
the first month the production was increased materially. After this, 
however, the help would grow listless, and the production would fall off 
and the quality of the goods deteriorate." (Pages 460-461.) 

The reason is, the flesh and blood of the operatives have only so much 
work in them, and it was all got out in ten hours, and no more could be got 
out in twelve; and what was got extra in the first month was taken right 
out of the life of the operatives. (Page 461.) 

Report of the Chief of Massachusetts District Police for the year ending 
December 31, 1883. 

It has been stated by those who have specially watched the operation 
of the ten-hour law that "its enforcement has increased production and 
advanced the wages and moral standing of the masses." (Pages 17-18.) 

Ibid, for the year ending Dec. 31, 1886. 

One manufacturer stated to me a short time ago that he had run his 
mill 66 hours per week, supposing that by so doing he increased the pro- 
duction nearly one-eleventh, but was persuaded last January to reduce 
his running time to 60 hours per week, and at the end of six months found 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 369 

that the production of his mill had increased nearly ten per cent while the united 

STATES 

quality of the work done was more perfect. He also stated that no 
amount of argument could have convinced him that the results would be 
as they have proven. This shows that an operative can perform only a 
certain amount of labor though seemingly light when such labor is re- 
quired every working day in the year. (Pages 71-72.) 

Report of the Connecticut Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1886. 

Down to a certain point, the nations who work shorter hours not merely 
do better work, but more work than their competitors. In Russia the 
hands work twelve hours a day; in Germany and France, eleven; in 
England, nine. Yet nine hours a day of English work mean more than 
twelve hours of Russian work. 

The laborer receives better wages, and at the same time the manu- 
facturer gets a larger product — so much larger that it is the Russian, the 
German, or the Frenchman who requires protection against his English 
competitor in spite of the longer hours and lower day's wages. (Pages 
16-17.) 

Report of the New York State Factory Inspector. 1887. 

... As a rule, at the end of a year, they (women working over 10 
hours a day) would not have so much working time to their credit as 
those who were not so overworked. It can be deduced from this that it 
does not pay even the employer to insist upon excessive hours of toil, and, 
indeed, the invariable testimony of the proprietors of those mills which, 
before the present law was passed, ran eleven hours a day, is to the effect 
that their product was not decreased by the reduction to ten hours, but 
that the quality of the work was superior, the employees worked more 
steadily, and were less interfered with by sickness. (Page 28.) 

Ihid. 1890. 

. . . Every important manufactory in this State, which formerly 
required sixty-six or more hours of labor as a week's work, is now running 
on sixty or less hours' limit, and the testimony of the proprietors thereof is 
to the effect that their production increased instead of diminished at the 
same time. This enhancement of the productiveness of their employees 
has not come through increasing the speed of machinery, as some people 
suppose, but it is believed that it has grown out of the more contented 
minds and better rested bodies of the operatives. (Page 26.) 
24* 



370 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

2?ifJS? Fourth Annual Convention of the International Association of Factory In- 

spectors of North America. Boston, Wright and Potter, 1890. The 
Restriction of the Hours of Labor in Factories and Workshops. L. R. 
Campbell, Maine. 

The history of all successful movements for less hours to constitute a 
day's work, as a rule, is that they have been followed by a greater pro- 
duction in their several lines; and, also, these reductions in the hours of 
labor were generally followed by an increase of wages. (Pages 43-44.) 

In my state, since the adoption of the ten hours in lieu of the eleven 
hours, in mills and factories where machinery is employed, it is the uni- 
versal verdict of manufacturers that their product is as great under the 
ten-hour system as it was under the eleven-hour system, and I think that 
the same answer comes from every State that has adopted the ten-hour 
system, (Page 47.) 

Report of the New York Factory Inspector. 1894. 

It must be said that not only was the time reduction (60 hours a week) 
hailed with satisfaction by the hands in the factories, but their employers, 
within a short period from the date on which the law took effect, almost 
unanimously acknowledged that there was no reduction whatever in the 
amount of labor performed or the product of their plants. (Page 32.) 

Report of the Pennsylvania Factory Inspector. 1895. 

I have come in contact with a number of operators who state that their 
experience in working long hours had been detrimental to their business, 
and injurious to the employees, and by working shorter hours they get a 
better production per hour, and a superior article, and are now running 
their establishment less than the sixty hours a week required by law. 
(Page 6.) 

Report of the Michigan Bureau of Labor. 1899. 

All the young women in the employ of the Company (National Cash 
Register) are allowed to come in one hour and a quarter later than the 
men. ... At night they go home 15 minutes earlier than the men. 
They are given one-half holiday each week to do their shopping and a full 
" day's holiday each month. . . . These same women, says Mr. Patterson, 
do the same amount of work as when they worked 10 hours per day and 
its quality is much improved. They give us better and quicker work for 
our kindness and it has been a great source of profit to us. (Page 85.) 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 371 

Report of Chief of Massachusetts District Police. 1899. united 

STATES 

One question has been raised from the beginning, which is, whether or 
not legislation of this kind does not make it impossible for our manufactur- 
ing industries to compete successfully with those of other States of the 
Union not having laws fixing the limit of hours of labor for women and 
minors. ... To shorten the hours of labor, it was said, would reduce the 
production of our factories, and increase the running expenses, unless 
wages should be cut down to meet the changed condition. The evils 
predicted have not come to pass. It is at least probable, if it cannot be 
claimed as an ascertained fact, that, taking a reasonable period for the 
basis of comparison, better work and more of it is done by the operatives 
than under the former system of unrestricted hours of labor. ... It 
may be assumed that no legislation in this Commonwealth would insist 
upon maintaining a policy whose effect would be the destruction of our 
manufacturing supremacy. ... It cannot be shown that the laws in 
question have wrought injury to any interest; but it is true that they have 
been highly beneficial to those most deeply concerned. The condition of 
operatives, of women and minors as well as men, have been greatly im- 
proved. (Pages 11-12.) 



Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and 
Conditions of Capital and Labor employed in Manufactures and General 
Business. Vol. VII. 1900. Testimony of Mrs. Fanny B. Ames, 
former Factory Inspector of the State of Massachusetts. 

It is also claimed that a shorter day would not lessen production even 
in hand work. Perhaps you would be interested in the experiment of a 
gentleman who had an establishment in Fitchburg where were made the 
balls used in bicycle bearings. When he first took charge of the establish- 
ment they were running ten hours a day, with the exception of Saturday, 
when they ran eight, making fifty-eight hours a week. Women were 
employed in inspecting the balls. They do this by touch, which becomes 
very perfect in time and sensitive to the least imperfection; the balls are 
dropped into boxes, the perfect balls into one box and the imperfect ones 
into others, graded according to the imperfection. In the afternoon the 
work done by one woman in the morning is inspected by another, and thus 
there is a double inspection. He became persuaded that there was a 
certain strain in this work on the eyes, the fingers, and the attention, and 
finally he made up his mind that shorter hours would be better for the 
women and would not lessen the amount of work done — it would be better 



372 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED for their health and quite as well for the business. Accordingly he directed 

STATES ^j^g women's department to be run but nine hours a day. At first the 

women were very much distressed. As they were paid by the number of 
thousands of balls inspected, they thought it would permit them to earn 
less money; but they soon found that they did just as many balls in the 
nine hours as they had heretofore done in the ten; and they had besides 
ten minutes' vacation in the middle of the morning session and in the 
afternoon. Later, the time was shortened to eight hours and a half. 
There was not so much objection as at first, because they began to see 
what the object was, and they soon found they did just as much in eight 
and a half as in nine. At last accounts the time had been shortened to 
eight hours, and it was believed it could be cut down to seven and one- 
half. (Page 63.) 

What I wanted to show was that the trend of intelligent business 
management is to the conclusion that when a person who is doing the 
work has less strain upon him, he will get out more work up to a cer- 
tain limit, in less time; and where the work is done by the piece it is 
done with less dawdling and more diligence, nor is it so hard to work 
with that severe attention for less time as it is to work longer hours 
with less attention. (Page 64.) 

Report of the New York Department of Labor: On Factory Inspection. 
1901. 

It was feared by employers that to reduce the hours of labor was to 
reduce the quantity of products, and that in the competition for markets 
the longer hours would have a decided advantage over the shorter hours; 
but it has been demonstrated that the lessening of the hours of labor does 
not, within certain limits, result in a decrease, but rather in an increase 
of products instead. 

Another phase of the subject has also come to the front gradually in 
the course of this agitation for a shorter work-day. It is that quality 
of product may be improved by a shorter day, and by this improvement 
in quality of the product has come to be considered the improvement of 
the quality of the laborer himself. (Page 562.) 

Report of the United States Industrial Commission. Final Report. Vol. 
XIX. 1902. 

Those States which are just now advancing to the position of manu- 
facturing communities might well learn from these examples the lesson 



EFFECT OF SHORTER HOURS ON OUTPUT 373 

that permanent industrial progress cannot be built upon the physical united 
exhaustion of women and children. ... A reduction in hours has never ^"^^"^^^ 
lessened the working people's ability to compete in the markets of the 
world. States with shorter work-days actually manufacture their prod- 
ucts at a lower cost than States with longer work-days. (Page 788.) 



United States Congress. House Report, No. 1793 (4405). Hours of 
Laborers on Public IVorks of the United States. Report from the 
Committee on Labor. Fifty-seventh Congress, 1st Session. 1901- 
1902. 

No reasonable person would, for a moment, entertain the proposition 
that the work day should again be lengthened to fourteen or twelve 
hours. . . . It is nowhere claimed, so far as your committee is aware, 
that any reduction in the hours of labor has had a detrimental effect on 
business, on manufacturers, on labor as a unit, or individual laborers. 
The advocates of the short-hour theory, on the other hand, trace the moral, 
social, and financial improvement of the laborer to this cause, and allege 
that business was at no time injured, but improved, if affected, and that 
production was stimulated and consumption increased. (Page 9.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1903-1904. 

Manufacturers maintain that by enforcing shorter hours they are 
unable to compete with those factories which are not hampered in this 
way. In order to test the truth or falsity of this claim, the Salford Iron 
Works of Manchester, England, voluntarily reduced the number of hours 
required for a day's work to eight. After giving the system a fair trial, 
the management declared that the character of work performed and wages 
paid remained about the same; that although a depression in trade took 
place about the same time this experiment was being made, and competi- 
tion was exceedingly fierce, the output was greater and the receipts larger 
than under the old system. The Salford Iron Works continue the eight- 
hour system to the present day, and other allied industries and the arsenal 
works and dock-yards are following example. (Page 142.) 

Eleventh Special Report of the United States Commissioner of Labor. 1904. 
Regulation and Restriction of Output. 

Considered solely with reference to speed or intensity of exertion, a 
moderate reduction in the number of hours of labor each day usually 



374 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED tends to increase the speed rather than to restrict it. From the stand- 

^ ^ ^^ point of exertion a reduction of hours is exactly the opposite from a re- 

striction of output. (Pages 15-16.) 

Discussions in Economics and Statistics. Vol. II. Francis A. Walker, 
Ph.D., LL.D. The Eight-hour Law Agitation. New York, Holt, 
1899. 

There is little doubt that all the successive reductions in the working 
day which have thus far taken place among certain laboring populations 
have resulted in an immediate gain to productive power in the generation 
following. It has probably never occurred that a reduction of working 
time has been all loss, since a somewhat increased activity, a somewhat 
enhanced energy, has characterized each part of the time remaining. 
(Page 387.) 

Factory People and their Employers. E. L. Shuey. New York, 1900. 

Among the most desirable things is the matter of shorter hours for 
women. The experience of a number of leading manufacturers has indi- 
cated that equal results may be obtained in many forms of manufacture 
in the shorter hours. Fels & Co. of Philadelphia gradually reduced the 
time of their women from ten to eight hours, girls working five days in the 
week. At the same time wages have been practically increased. The 
Levy Bros. Co. (England) has had a similar experience. The National 
Cash Register Co. in the same manner reduced its hours for women from 
ten to eight. (Page 113.) 

Fourteenth and Fifteenth Annual Conventions of the International Associa- 
tion of Factory Inspectors of America. Indianapolis, 1900. Niagara 
Falls, 1901. {Bound in New York State Department of Labor Re- 
port, 1901.) The Shorter IVorkday in its Effect upon the Personal 
Character of the Worker. John Holbrook, Deputy Commissioner of 
Labor, Michigan. 

... It was feared by employers that to reduce the hours of labor was 
to reduce the quantity of products, and that in the competition for markets 
the longer hours would have a decided advantage over the shorter hours; 
but it has been demonstrated that the lessening of the hours of labor does 
not, within certain limits, result in a decrease, but rather in an increase of 
products instead. (Page 562.) 



LONG HOURS REDUCE EFFICIENCY 375 

American Economic Association Quarterly. {Formerly, Publications of the united 
American Economic Association.) Third Series. Vol. IX. No. 3. 
1908. Factory Legislation of Rhode Island. John Ker Towles, 
Ph.D. Princeton. 

Perhaps the strongest reason for the observation of the statute is the 
fact that the mill managers have found that a reduction of the average 
working day to ten hours has not curtailed production. Such influences, 
rather than any activity on the part of the factory inspectors, caused the 
manufacturers, during the normal periods of business, to comply with the 
law. (Page 72.) 



(2) Long Hours Reduce Efficiency and thus Result in 
Inferior Output 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIII. 1843. Children's Employment g^^j^ 
Commission. John Lawson Kennedy, Esq., Lancashire. 

408. . . . Practically it has been found that the attention of the 
workman, on which the application of his skill and the productiveness of 
the machine under his care depend, cannot be sustained beyond a certain 
daily period. From this cause, namely, the impossibility of keeping up 
the attention, care, and skill of the workman in applying the machinery, 
night work has been generally abandoned in the cotton-spinning trade; 
and it is, moreover, an important fact that those establishments in this 
district which resorted systematically to night work have almost without 
exception become bankrupt. I have been assured by printers themselves 
that the rule as to the unprofitableness of long hours of work for long 
continued periods is equally applicable to the (calico-print) trade. I have 
been favoured by an influential house in the print trade with an inspection 
of those books which show the rates of production in their roller printing 
machines during a period of 4 months when they worked unusually long 
hours, vii., 15 hours a day, under a peculiar stress of business. The 
machines never stopped from morning till night and there was no inter- 
mission at the dinner hour. From the beginning of the first month to the 
middle of the second the production kept very steady, scarcely varying 
from week to week, with a comparatively low proportion of spoiled work, 
towards the end of the second month a gradual decrease in the production 
of the machines was perceptible, attended by an increased proportion of 
spoiled work. Towards the end of the third month, and throughout the 
fourth, the production of the machines arrived at their minimum, and the 



37^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

B^^N proportion of spoiled work its maximum. The proportion of spoiled work 

from the beginning of the first to the end of the fourth month actually 
doubled itself, whilst the average production of the machines decreased 
from 100 to 90 per cent, during the same time. In fact the amount of 
spoiled work increased to such an alarming degree that the parties re- 
ferred to felt themselves compelled to shorten the hours of labour to avoid 
loss, and as soon as the alteration was made the amount of spoiled work 
sunk to its former level. The men were paid extra wages for their extra 
exertions, and there was no intention or motive on their parts to produce 
this result. It is, I am informed, the general experience of this branch of 
trade that under whatever circumstances night work is tried the produce 
is distinguished by a larger share than ordinary of spoiled work. (Page 72.) 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 73. 1844. 

Mr. Vernon Smith: 

But he would venture to say, that though the diminution of time was 
one-sixth, the diminution of profitable labour would be much less because 
the last 2 hours would be the least efficient owing to the exhaustion caused 
by the previous 10 hours of labour. But he could not think that the com- 
merce of this country was really in so ticklish, hazardous and perilous a 
state, as to depend upon so small an amount, more or less, of additiona. 
labour. ... If the proposed diminution of labour should induce some 
evils as regarded our commerce, it appeared to him that the change would 
be attended, on the other hand, with great advantage to the country. 
(Pages 1404-1405.) 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 74. 1844. Letter in Bolton Free 
Press {April, 1844). 

"There is also another consideration for employers, namely, that in a 
day's work of 12 hours, the last hour by reason of the exhaustion and 
listlessness of the workers, is the least productive in quantity, and the 
least satisfactory in quality." (Page 911.) 

"The probability is, that the twelfth hour produces more spoiled work 
than any other 2 hours of the day." (Page 911.) 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 92. 1847. 

The Earl of Ellesmere: 

. . . Deductions are made, when the article is brought in by the opera- 
tive, for waste and spoil. . . . from such information as I can obtain, it 



LONG HOURS REDUCE EFFICIENCY 377 

is my firm belief that nine-tenths of that spoiled will arise in the last great 

BRITAIN 

weary hours of the operatives' present average toil. I have never met 
with any man of any class, conversant with the subject, who has not laid 
much stress on this circumstance. (Page 898.) 

The Bishop of Oxford: 

Could they for a moment conceive, that by limiting the labour of the 
factory worker to 10 hours a day instead of 12, they would sweep away 
all the manufacturers of the country, and drive them abroad? . . . Let 
them remember that he was speaking of young females who had to follow 
the rapid motions of the machinery of a mill; . . . and remember also 
the fixedness of the attention which was necessary for these young women 
to maintain when walking in the midst of a factory, where danger threat- 
ened them at every turn, and where a single instance of negligence might 
be attended with loss of life or limb. . . . Could their Lordships believe 
that upon the last 2 hours' labour of that trembling hand, tending upon 
that machinery after long, unceasing, and heart-consuming attention, 
when nature almost refused to perform her functions — could their Lord- 
ships believe that upon those 2 last hours depended all the profits and 
accumulations of the manufacturers? He believed that the work done in 
those 2 last hours was infinitely inferior in quality to that which was done 
in any other portion of the day. It was demanding work when nature 
refused the power of working. (Pages 939-940.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

Overtime {i. e., over ten and a half hours daily) allows but scanty 
opportunity for leisure. . . . The consequent effect upon the health 
of the workers is exceedingly injurious. Some employers, too, hold that 
in proportion as the workpeople sufi'er in health, their work suffers in 
execution. (Page 11.) 

Eight Hours for Work. John Rae. London, Macmillan, 1894. 

But for the last 60 years we have been slowly learning the lesson that 
all this successive prolongation of working hours, which was near eating 
the heart out of the labouring manhood of England, was also, from the 
standpoint of the manufacturers' own interest, a grave pecuniary mistake. 
In their haste to be repaid their expenditure on machinery, the manufac- 
turers were really wearing down the most precious machine they had got 
— their great machine mere, as Blanqui called it, on which the success of 
all the rest depended. They found that with this flesh and blood machine 



378 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



an hour's more running in the day did not mean an hour's more product 
in the day, but that really, after a certain limit, an extra hour of repose 
has much higher productive value than an extra hour of work. ... A 
French manufacturer once said to Guizot : "We used to say it was the last 
hour that gave us our profit, but we have now learnt it was the last hour 
that ate up our profit," and though we still hear much fright expressed 
about the competition of the pauper and long hour labour of other coun- 
tries, we are coming more and more to perceive that Mr. Mundella is 
probably right in saying it is really their long hours that save us from their 
competition, because their long hours impair the personal efficiency of 
their labour and the competition between the nations is growing every 
day more and more to be mainly a competition in personal efficiency. 
(Pages 11-12.) 



GERMANY Jahresbertchte der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten und Bergbehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1903. Bd. II L [Annual Reports of the {German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1903. Vol. III.] Berlin, Decker, 1904. 

Mecklenburg Schwerin. 

Abnormally long hours of work are gradually disappearing, partly by 
the influence of the trade unions and their demands for a shorter day, 
partly because of the legal restrictions, but also because employers are 
generally beginning to realize their ineffectiveness. (Page 7'^.) 

Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten und Bergbehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1904. Bd. III. [Reports of the {German) Factory and Mine 
Inspectors for 1904. Vol. III.] Berlin, Decker, 1905. 

Elsass Lothringen. 

The abandonment of extremely long hours in Lothringen is due less 
to the efforts of the unions than to the effect of legislation. It is due most 
of all to the steady if slow increase of insight among employers, that a 
permanently long working day is useless. . . . Only force of habit and 
the stupidity of some employers — also of some workers — explain the per- 
sistence of long hours in the face of all the favorable testimony for the 
shorter day. (Page 26"^l) 



Hours and Wages in Relation to Production. Lujo Brentano. Trans' 
lated by Mrs. Wm. Arnold. London, Sonneyischein, 1894. 

Before the passing of the Ten Hours Act, individual manufacturers 
who were agitating for that law had set on foot experiments in their 



LONG HOURS REDUCE EFFICIENCY 379 

factories, with the view of testing the assertion that the lowering of the GERMANY 
working day from 12 to 10 hours would ruin the cotton industry. These 
cases made it quite clear that the question was not merely the arith- 
metical one, — if 12 hours produce x, what will 10 produce? It was found 
that the work done in the last two hours was so small that in the experi- 
mental shortening of the working day from 12 to 10 hours the output was 
not one-sixth but only one-twelfth less than formerly. In addition to 
this, it was found that just in those last two hours a great deal of material 
was spoiled by the wearied and therefore careless operatives. When, 
therefore, the Ten Hours Act was actually passed, — it became generally 
apparent that, as Ernest von Plener said in his work on factory legislation, 
"the mere lengthening of the working day of a workman was not equiva- 
lent to the increase of his productive capacity; the operatives, especially 
the younger ones, no longer exhausted by excessive bodily effort, produced 
the same amount, and frequently even turned out more in the shorter 
time." (Pages 29-30.) 

It has been everywhere observed that the workmen in countries where 
work-time is short produce more than in those where it is long. ... I 
myself was told in March, 1890, by an overseer in Mr. Mathers' machine 
works in Salford, . . . that he had worked in Dresden, England, and 
America; and he said that the greater efficiency of the American workman 
was a result of his shorter hours. In the same way he had observed an 
increase of production in Salford as often as the worktime was shortened; 
in Saxony, on the other hand, one of the chief reasons of the inferior 
efficiency of labour was the length of the working-day. . . . And Brassey 
says of the Russians, that one English workman produces as much in ten 
hours as two Russians in sixteen. 

In complete harmony with the above, it has been further observed that 
in one and the same country, workers with regularly short hours outstrip 
those who regularly work longer. (Pages 32-33.) 

At the congress of Hygiene at Vienna, in 1887, the Swiss factory in- 
spector, Schuler, reported that in Switzerland experience had shown that 
the legal reduction of the working day from twelve to eleven hours, i. e., 
by 8>^ per cent, had led, in short, to a falling off in the less well-equipped 
cotton-spinning factories of only 3 per cent in production, while in the 
well-equipped ones it was only 2 to 1>^ per cent. In Muhlhausen, Dolfuss 
reduced his working day from twelve to eleven hours, and promised his 
operatives that their wages should remain unaltered if they produced 
the same quantity of work as before. At the end of a month it was seen 
that not only as much work was done in eleven hours, as formerly in 
twelve, but 5 per cent more. (Pages 35-36.) 



380 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

FRANCE Bulletin de V Inspection du Travail. Ministere du Commerce, de I'ln- 

dustrie, des Posies et des Telegraphes. Fasc. 5 and 6. Travaux 
originaux des Inspecteurs. [Original Contributions by the Inspectors.] 
Etude sur V Influence de la Reduction de la Journee de Travail sur le 
Rendement Industriel. [The Effect of Shorter Hours on Production.] 
M. Grillet, Inspector at Rennes. Paris, 1902. 

The most striking and happy results of the reduction of hours effected 
within the last four years (brought about in two steps: first to 10>^, then 
to 10 hours) has been, that many employers are more ready to agree to 
the principle of limiting the adult worker's hours of labor; that the general 
and uniform application of a shorter day has been facilitated, and that 
upright and reliable employers are able to affirm that this reduction of 
■Y2 in the length of hours has not brought about any sensible loss of output. 
(Page 425.) 

One thing is certain: in proportion as the daily duration of working 
hours is prolonged, the production per hour decreases. What does the 
employer want of his workmen? Hours of work, not hours of presence. 
What does he need? To secure the best possible use of his workman's 
strength. Now, to attain that, it is essential that the worker should have 
rest periods sufficiently long to completely repair his vitality. (Page 
426.) 

M. Riviere in a report to the International Congress for Labor Legisla- 
tion in Paris, July 1900, set forth in masterly fashion the disadvantages 
of long hours of work from the industrial, not the sentimental point of 
view. We have reached the same conclusions by a different route. 

Now, if workmen are employed steadily eight hours a day for a certain 
time, say two months, then 9 hours for an equal period and then in suc- 
cession for 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 hours, it can be shown that the production 
per hour is at first nearly the same (in 6, 7, 8, or 9 hours of work) and that, 
consequently, the daily output is directly proportioned to the length of 
the working day. After that, in proportion as length of working time 
increases, production per hour decreases and as a result, daily output does 
not keep pace with daily hours of work. (Page 426.) 

It can be stated positively that the workman's daily output diminishes 
progressively, starting with such a period as we have just mentioned, and 
becomes stationary after from 8 to 15 days have elapsed. It is natural 
that it should be so. Taking one single day, after a certain number of 
hours have elapsed fatigue comes on (later, if the workman is fit; sooner 
if he is already fagged by previous work) and his productive capacity 
sinks. The hourly output decreases toward the end of the day while at 



LONG HOURS REDUCE EFFICIENCY 381 

the same time duration of work is prolonged. Then, when the workman France 
resumes his work on the following day, his fatigue of the day before has 
not all disappeared. His daily output, is then, a little less every day 
than it was the day before, working hours being the same, until finally at 
the end of a certain period, an equilibrium is arrived at. 

It is evident that the contrary will be true if hours of work are reduced. 
The output per hour will rise until, again, an equilibrium is estab- 
lished. 

The result is, that when the employer increases working hours con- 
siderably, and for a considerable length of time, the final hours of every 
day bring him a certain loss, varying in difl"erent industries. 

The personal interest of the employer, then, is, not to overpass the 
"maximum day," that duration of time during which the worker's pro- 
ductivity is at its best. (Page 426.) 

Our observations enable us to say positively: If it is not carried beyond 
a certain limit of hours (eight, or nine, or ten a day according to the in- 
dustry) reduction of working hours has not only not caused any sensible 
diminution in output, but instead, has resulted in an often notable im- 
provement in the quality of the product. (Page 428.) 

These results have not only been demonstrated in hand work, where 
the workman's share in production is direct but also in machine work, 
where the workman's part is primarily to supervise the machine. For 
then, by reason of the shorter sojourn in the factory the workman is 
more alert, more ready: he loses less time; feeds his machine more rapidly, 
and this quite unconsciously, just because he feels more able. (Page 
428.) 

M. Benedict B — having successively tried the 12, then the 11, 10, and 
finally the 8 hour day in his factories, definitely established the 8 hour 
day because it assured him not only the best hourly output but also the 
best daily output. . . . Naturally (he told us) one of his women could 
produce more in 9 or 10 hours, but only temporarily. According to his 
opinion, every industry has its maximum day which ought not to be over- 
passed and ... in his, this maximum is eight hours. If a rush of work 
comes, he requires his workwomen to work for nine hours, and the output 
keeps up if two conditions are observed: 1. that supervision is good: 2. 
that overwork does not last for a long stretch of time. (Page 434.) 

M. Moussard, carriage maker, said: 

In our shop the men do as much in 10 hours as formerly in 12, because, 
with 12 hours they became fatigued and worked without energy. In 
ten hours they work steadily. (Pages 435.) 



382 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELGIUM 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Royaume de Belgique, Conseil Superieur du Travail, 9^ Session, 1907. 
[Belgian Higher Council of Labor, 9th session, 1907.] Reglementation 
de la Duree du Travail des Adultes. [Regulation of Hours of Work 
for Adults.] Discussion. 

M. G. Helleputte: 

It has been established by figures which it is impossible to disregard 
that what is lost in time is regained in work-intensiveness, and this is not 
surprising. It is impossible that product should be proportioned to the 
number of hours, for the work of a fatigued organism is not as effective 
as that of a fresh and able organism. We have but to recall our own ex- 
periences to see this. If one could trace from hour to hour the curve of 
effectiveness of the workman, one would very probably find that it rose 
in the morning, rapidly attained a maximum, and fell toward evening to a 
point which descended as the working day increased in length. 

Cut off the last hour experimentally and you do not reduce, propor- 
tionally, the output of a given workman: cut it oflf permanently and the 
workman, thanks to the longer rest, becomes more alert and vigorous. 
His curve of work will be enlarged. It is understood, of course, that this 
reduction is not carried to extremes. (Page 13.) 

Berichte iiher die Fabrikinspektion. 1884: 1885. [Reports of the {Swiss) 
Factory Inspectors, 1884 and 1885.] Aarau, Sauerldnder, 1886. 

The argument that hours of work, if prolonged beyond a certain point, 
result in increased production has been disproved by the experience of a 
factory where ... to avoid over-production the hours were reduced to 
one-half the usual number during the summer. According to calculations 
the output should have been reduced by 50 per cent; actually it only fell 
10 per cent. True that in this factory hand work played an important 
part; yet does not this result prove that workmen, overstrained by ex- 
cessive toil and worn by fatigue in excess of their strength undergo a 
deterioration of their productive facilities? In proportion as fatigue 
enfeebles in them that master faculty — application — they come in fact 
to produce less and less in the same extent of time. (Page 65.) 



GERMANY Archivfiir SoiialeGesetigebufigundStatistik. Bd.VIII. 1895. ZurVerkiiri- 
ung der Arbeitsieit in der Mechanischen Textilindustrie. [The Reduc- 
tion of Working Hours in the Mechanical Textiles Industry.] Rudolf 
Martin, Refer endar in the Statistical Office of the Kingdom of Saxony. 

The mechanical textile industries of Germany suffered greatly after 
1830, because, protected by a high tariff but with no protective labor laws 



LONG HOURS REDUCE EFFICIENCY 383 

she sought her economic salvation through long hours of work and low GERMANY 
wages — in a word, through defective conditions of labor. Depending on 
her long hours and low wages she neglected to improve her technic, whilst 
England, with a ten-hour day for women and children established as far 
back as 1850, and higher wages . . . made vast strides. . . . The melan- 
choly result was that the history of cotton mills ... in the '70's was a 
history of bankruptcy. (Page 261.) 

Revue Internationale de Sociologie, Nov. -Dec, 1895. Le Travail Humain ITALY 
et ses Lois. [The Laws of Human Work.] Francesco S. Nitti, 
University of Naples. Paris, Giard et Briere, 1895. 

The workman who persists in working despite his fatigue not only 
makes a greater organic effort with more trouble but produces an inferior 
mechanical result. (Page 1029.) 

. . . These facts explain how it is that people subjected to long hours 
of work finally produce inferior output; and they explain, too, what seems 
at first an economic paradox, that the whole cost of industry is ordinarily 
less in countries where the hours of work are short than in those where 
they are long. (Page 1029.) 

One of the most intelligent of the Swiss factory inspectors said long 
ago on this point, "Germany and France, apparently will not reduce their 
hours of work; Austria has an animated opposition going on to reduction 
of hours; Italy retains night work. Their workmen will become less and 
less capable of productive labor whilst ours will advance and then we shall 
see once more what we have seen several times before, namely, that we 
shall excel our neighbors." (Page 1029.) 

Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1871. UNITED 

^ STATES 

The operatives vary in perfectness and productiveness as the day 
progresses; and if there should be a reduction to ten hours there would 
not be a loss of one-eleventh of the product. ... I think it will be found 
that much of the cloth made during the eleventh hour is of poorer quality 
than the rest, and that the necessity of looking it over the next day and 
fixing it all right lessens the product of that next day. ... I certainly 
believe that the productive capacity of a set of work-people may be les- 
sened by increasing the hours of their daily work. The question is not 
legitimately one of arithmetic, nor can it be settled by argument about 
one-eleventh less or one-tenth more. It is a question to be settled by 
actual results on long-continued trial. (Pages 499-500.) 



384 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Report of the Chief of Massachusetts District Police for the Year Ending 

STATES ^^^ ^^^ ^^^5 

It must of course be admitted, that there is a limit to human endurance. 
If one labors twelve hours a day, it cannot be maintained that he will do 
as much work in the last two hours, nor do it as well, as in any previous 
two hours of the same day. Jaded by excessive toil, the brain becomes 
sluggish and the fingers clumsy. It is not an assumption, but an ac- 
knowledged fact that under the improved condition resulting from shorten- 
ing the number of hours of labor, operatives produce in the shorter period 
at least the same amount of work; and many manufacturers admit that 
in the last two hours in any given day under the old system, work so much 
inferior was produced, that what was gained in quantity was lost in qual- 
ity. The shortening of the number of hours of labor, if the time thus 
gained for leisure is used for proper purposes, becomes one of the best 
means for the elevation of the people thus affected. (Pages 19-20.) 

Getting a Living. The Problem of Wealth and Poverty, Profits, Wages, and 
Trades Unionism. Geo. Lewis Bolen. New York, Macmillan, 1903. 

Chap. 15. Shorter Workday. 

If in the tenth hour as much work has been done as the average for 
the previous nine hours, a reduction of time to nine hours per day, at the 
same pay, would be an increase of wages by eleven and one-ninth per cent, 
unless the extra hour of rest increased the hourly product. But in any 
work not fixed in speed by steadily running machinery, less is done in the 
tenth hour, by reason of weariness, than in other hours; and the work of 
the last hour, like overtime work at night, weakens a person for the next 
day. It is this weariness that causes accidents to occur two or three 
times as frequently in the last hour as in other hours — a fact proved by 
European statistics. With the steady machinery, too, weariness, as a 
rule, either lowers the quality of the work done, or by frequent stoppage 
lessens its amount — often causing both these losses. (Pages 407-408.) 



C. Incentive to Improvements in Manufacture 

The regulation of the working day has acted as a stim- 
ulus to improvement in processes of manufacture. Inven- 
tion of new machinery and perfection of old methods have 
followed the introduction of shorter hours. 



INCENTIVE TO IMPROVEMENTS 385 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1859. Report of Inspector of great 
Factories for Half-year ending 31st October, 1858. Britain 

But the increase in the actual number of mills is not the only measure 
of progression, for the great improvements that have been made in ma- 
chinery of all kinds have vastly increased their productive powers, im- 
provements to which a stimulus was doubtless given, especially as regards 
the greater speed of the machines in a given time by the restrictions of the 
hours of work. These improvements and the closer application which 
the operatives are enabled to give have had the effect as I have been again 
and again assured of as much work being turned oflf in the shortened time 
as used to be in the longer hours. (Page 10.) 



Factory Act Legislation. The Cobden Pri^e Essay for 1891. Victorine 
Jeans. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1891. 

Each succeeding experiment has proved legislation to be justifiable 
not only on grounds sanitary, educational and moral, but also when 
judged by the "strictest rules of Political Economy." All the English 
economists were against the Act of 1844; probably there is hardly a 
single writer of note who would wish to see that or any subsequent act 
repealed to-day. The expected economic results nowhere came to pass, 
because, wherever legislation penetrated it acted as a stimulus to "in- 
vention" in the best and widest sense of the word. 

. . . Production will increase with the improved vigor of the work- 
people and the use of better appliances, wages will rise, foreign trade can 
be only temporarily injured; the whole basis of the industry must in the 
end be made wider and stronger. (Pages 83-84.) 



A Shorter Working Day. R. A. Hadfield of Hadfield's Steel Foundry Co., 
Sheffield, and H. de B. Gibbins, M.A. London, Methuen, 1892. 

Yet production has not suffered. The reason is that necessity, here 
as always, showed herself to be literally the mother of invention, and the 
decrease of hours was amply compensated by an increase of new ma- 
chinery, appliances, and devices which have brought the development of 
the manufacturing industries up to the present point. Some fear that 
we have gone as far in our inventions as it is possible for us to go, and that 
if we were to reduce the hours of labor now we could no longer compensate 
by increased facilities of production. But we can hardly believe that this 
is the case. To take but one example: The steam engine alone is as yet 
25* 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



386 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



practically in its infancy, and one can hardly believe that there is no room 
for further invention when we remember that only 10 per cent of the power 
generated by coal in the steam engine is utilized while the remaining 90 
per cent is wasted. (Page 88.) 



The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

But the exemption from regulation is also responsible for corresponding 
deficiencies in the technical administration of the industry. The very 
fact that the employers are legally free to make their operatives work 
without limit, and to crowd any number of them into one room, makes 
them disinclined to put thought and capital into improving the arrange- 
ments. 

. . . We might indefinitely prolong the list of examples of the effect 
of the Factory Acts in improving the processes of manufacture. (Page 
53.) 



History of Factory Legislation. 
IVestminster, King, 1903. 



B. L. HuTCHiNS and Amy Harrison. 



If it could be shown that this regulated industry, far from suffering 
in competition with others, went ahead, improved its machinery, and 
developed a higher standard of comfort than its rivals, then, although the 
improvement might not be due to the legislation, there would be, at all 
events, a strong presumption that good and not harm had been done. 
And this is what has taken place. . . . The improvement in the regulated 
industry was clear and conspicuous. (Page 121.) 



FRANCE La Femme dans VIndustrie. 

Paris, Colin, 1906. 



[Woman in Industry.] R. Gonnard. 



The inspector of labor of Lyons says: 

"It has come about that this decrease of the legal maximum limit of 
hours of labor (ten hours a day), which went into effect the 28th of March, 
1902, obliging the employer to pay a higher wage for overtime hours, 
has urged the manufacturers to replace their former equipment by ma- 
chines of great producing power. In short, for the manufacturers in 
question, the regulation has become a powerful stimulus, which has driven 
them to do away with methods of manufacture already somewhat super- 
annuated." (Page 78.) 



EFFECT ON SCOPE OF WOMEN*S WORK 387 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 1903- united 



STATES 



1904. 

Wherever a uniform standard of wages, hours of labor, and wholesome 
sanitary conditions have been uniformly enforced, the result has been 
that laborers have been stimulated to render greater services to their 
employers, and, in turn, employers strive to excel in improved machinery 
and devices for the protection of employees, sanitation, and methods of 
production in general. (Page 138.) 

That the enforcing of a certain standard in regard to hours of labor, 
wages, and sanitary conditions compels employers to continually seek 
more improved machinery and methods of production is as true in prac- 
tice as in theory. (Page 140.) 



D. Efed on Scope of Women s Work 

The establishment of a legal limit to the hours of woman's 
labor does not result in contracting the sphere of her work. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 1878. Report of Inspectors of g^^^ 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1877. 

. . . The argument that the tendency of the Factory Acts is to place 
an artificial restriction on the employment of women, and thus to de- 
preciate the market value on their labour, is refut-ed on every hand by 
practical experience in the textile manufactories. Here the restrictions 
upon women's work are the most stringent; and yet the tendency for a 
long series of years has been the opposite, the proportion of women em- 
ployed has steadily increased. The same observation applies to many of 
the trades and occupations carried on in London. As for the rate of 
wages paid, there is not an employer in the metropolis who will hesitate to 
acknowledge that there has been during the last ten or fifteen years a 
very substantial and important advance in the remuneration given to 
women for their work. (Pages 15-16.) 

Labour Laws for Women. Their Reason and their Results. Independent 
Labour Party, London, 1900. 

If you go to the employers and ask them if they would employ more 
women and pay them better if their hours were not restricted, they tell 



388 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT you such an idea never entered their calculations; and the thoughtful 

BRITAIN 

ones will often tell you that they welcome the legal limit because it enables 
them to withstand unscrupulous competitors, and to refuse unreasonable 
customers who rush in the afternoon with work which they want done 
for the next morning. (Pages 17-18.) 

Special inquiries sent round to the secretaries of trade unions in which 
there were women members, for the purpose of this tract, have elicited a 
large concensus of opinion that women are by no means being driven out 
of work by regulation. Over and over again in the answers we find such 
statements as these: "Shortening of hours has made women's labour more 
valuable because they do their work better; they are not so tired and worn 
out." 



The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

We thus find, on comparing men and women workers, that a real 
difl^erence does exist between the two classes, a difference which covers, 
not the whole indeed, but the greater part of the industrial field. This 
difi"erence consists primarily in the fact that while men are permanent, 
women are temporary industrial workers. From this primary difference 
arise secondary differences of need and desire, leading to inferior training 
and inferior skill on the part of the women, and to a consequent difl'er- 
entiation of work. . . . 

But, it may be objected, that although Factory Legislation would im- 
prove the women, it annoys the employer, and makes him inclined to get 
rid of women altogether and employ men. As a matter of fact, this 
course, though often threatened beforehand, is not in practice followed. 
Where women can be employed, their labour is so much cheaper than that 
of men that there is no chance of their being displaced. The work of 
men and women tending automatically to differentiate itself into separate 
branches, it follows that there is very little direct competition between 
individual men and women. (Page 209.) 

The introduction into any trade of machines which can be successfully 
worked after a short period of training, and which demand neither very 
much physical strength nor very much mechanical knowledge, will, for 
instance, be pretty certain to promote the employment of women. On 
the other hand, the introduction of large, heavy and intricate machinery 
will, as certainly, be favorable to the employment of men. Pages 
208-212. 



EFFECT ON SCOPE OF WOMEN's WORK 389 

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Vol. LXV. 1902. Factory ggj^YN 
Legislation considered with Reference to the Wages, etc. of the Operatives 
Protected Thereby. George Henry Wood. London, The Royal 
Statistical Society, 1902. 

An important aspect of factory legislation is its effects on the numbers 
of protected and unprotected workers employed. If the regulations are 
irksome and hamper industry, changes might be expected in the direction 
of employing unprotected male adults in the place of protected women, 
young persons, and children. 

There are, however, two important reasons why this may not have 
taken place. First, the protected workers are usually employed in routine 
process, where the employment of an adult male would not bring about a 
sufficient increase in the amount produced to pay that worker a reasonable 
wage. Second, the regulations of the trade unions which the male worker 
might join would probably become as stringent in relation to hours of 
labour as the Factory Acts, and as the hours now allowed by the Acts are 
above rather than below the average working week in industries where 
men are chiefly employed, it is reasonable to suppose that trade union 
action would reduce the hours in textile and other factories also, and the 
employer would not be the gainer in the hours which his machinery might 
run. (Page 309.) 

. . . The percentage of children employed diminished after 1835 until 
the "sixties," when the expansion in the textile trades brought about a 
marked change. The increase continued for only a few years, and though 
the small proportion of 1850 has not yet been reached, a considerable 
decline has taken place. Males between thirteen and eighteen years have 
declined almost consistently, their places apparently being taken by fe- 
males over thirteen years. This is only the substitution of one class of 
protected workers for another, and cannot be due to any movement to 
evade the Factory Regulations. It may be and probably is, due to the 
increased efficiency of the labour of female young persons and women, and 
in so far as this increased efficiency may be ascribed to Factory Acts, it is 
in the nature of an indirect effect. Women's labour was not regulated 
until 1844, so any change in the relative employment of men and women 
before that date is not traceable to the Acts, and since then the percentage 
of men employed has varied little. On the whole there seems no evidence 
of a movement in favour of the substitution of unprotected for protected 
workers, and the chief result of the changes has been a substitution of the 
protected adult and young person for the similarly protected child. In 



390 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT the interests of coming generations, this seems a most satisfactory and 

desirable direction in which to move. (Page 311.) 

Report of the 72nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science. 1902. London, Murray, 1903. Women s Labor. Second 
Report of the Committee . . . appointed to investigate the Economic 
Effect of the Legislation Regulating Women's Labor. 

Of all the factors which decide whether women or men shall be employed 
on a particular machine, it appears to me that the restrictive laws are the 
least important, the relative expense of the labor of the two sexes, the 
suitability of the work, local custom, the demand for labor in other in- 
dustries, all have great influence; but the cases where men are preferred 
to women, because of the 56J^ hours law are far to seek. (Page 292.) 

Report of the 73rd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science. 1903. London, Murray, 1904. Women's Labour. Third 
Report of the Committee . . . appointed to investigate the Economic 
Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labour. 

It is suggested that women are prevented from taking positions of 
responsibility, and from taking advantages of the possibilities of new 
skilled occupations, by their restriction from working extra hours at times 
of pressure; but no specific cases are given, and considering that it is rare 
that work is carried on more than 60 hours a week, or that women can 
work efficiently for longer hours, any effect in this direction must be very 
small. (Pages 336-337.) 

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and Amy Harrison. 
Westminster, King, 1903. 

It is surely extremely significant that whilst the attack on the regula- 
tion of women's labor has been fruitless in better organized industries — 
that is, in those which can make their wishes felt — it has taken effect 
precisely in those industries which are unorganized and collectively in- 
articulate. By the admission of the opposition itself, the women whose 
trades have been under State control for thirty, forty, or fifty years are 
now so strong, so efficient, so well organized that even those who most 
strongly disapprove of State control do not wish to withdraw it from them. 
Yet we are to believe that to those who are still working long hours, in 
unsanitary conditions, State control would mean lowered wages, perhaps 
ruin. (Page 193.) 



EFFECT ON SCOPE OF WOMEN S WORK 39I 

Le Travail de Nuit dans VIndustrie. Rapports sur son importance et sa GREAT 
reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. [Nightwork of 
Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and legal regula- 
tion. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes 
dans VIndustrie Anglaise. [Nightwork of Women in English In- 
dustry.] Geo. H. Wood, F. S. S. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The restrictions imposed on the employment of women, girls and 
children have not resulted in any displacement of female labor by male 
labor, except in the branches of the lead industry in which the employment 
of women is absolutely prohibited. Considering the entire textile in- 
dustry the proportion of women employed has remained comparatively 
stable during the last sixty years, and the successive raising of the age at 
which children may be employed in factories has been the means of in- 
creasing the proportion of adults employed in these trades in the place 
of young women and children. In other trades the regulations of the 
hours of work for women has not resulted in impeding the employment of 
women, nor in increasing the proportion of women doing work at home, 
nor even in diminishing the number of women working in mills. (Page 
244.) 

The Economic Journal. Vol. XIV. 1904. The Employment of Women 
in Paper Mills. B. L. Hutchins. 

The question may be asked, "Has the regulation of women's hours 
caused any restriction of women's employment?" ... No evidence is 
forthcoming to show that women have been dismissed or set aside owing 
to the regulations of the Act; no employer and only one foreman thought 
the regulations had any such tendency. . . . The prohibition of over- 
time is sometimes considered an inconvenience; but not one of a nature 
to cause displacement of women. (Pages 239-240.) 

To sum up it would seem at first sight that women are especially handi- 
capped in paper-making owing to the fact that night work is considered 
essential, is prohibited to women, and is permitted under certain condi- 
tions to the most formidable competitors of women, viz., male young 
persons. Nevertheless, the demand for women workers seems to be 
steadily increasing, and no displacement can be shown except that which 
has been brought about by the process and development of the industry 
on its mechanical side. The hours worked by the majority of women are 
about 25 per cent shorter than the legal maximum, and this arrangement 
is mainly due to conditions inherent in the industry itself, the main features 
and characteristics of which have been little affected by the provisions of 



392 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



the Factory Act. As regards the minority, certain grave abuses have 
been checked, night work and overtime have been abandoned, and there 
is no evidence that the employment of women has been thereby hindered. 
Wages have risen though hours are shorter. . . . The demand for women's 
labour is greatest and their earnings are said to show most of the upward 
tendency, in the lighter, cleaner, and more dexterous employments. In 
these better skilled branches, where healthy conditions are necessary to 
maintain efficiency, the regulations of the Act, so far as they enforce those 
conditions, do not hinder but promote the employment of women, and 
tend indirectly to divert their labour into those channels where it is least 
at a discount and most in demand. (Pages 247-248.) 



Women s IVork and Wages. Edward Cadbury, Cecile Matheson, and 
George Shann, M.A. London, Unwin, 1906. 

It is often stated by those who oppose regulation of women's work by 
legislation that the effect of such legislation is to displace women in favour 
of men. Our inquiry seems to prove, however, that this idea is erroneous, 
and that in the large majority of cases ... it is other questions altogether 
that determine the division of labour between men and women. A great 
deal of light has been thrown on the question of women's work and wages 
generally by the elucidation of the fact that as a rule men and women do 
different work, and the relation between men and women workers is, on 
the whole, that of two non-competing groups. It is quite true that that 
marginal division between the two groups is constantly shifting, but in 
the particular trades where this is the case the questions considered are 
the difference in wages between the two groups, their aptitude and physi- 
cal fitness for certain work, and the fact that women expect to leave work 
when married. (Page 39.) 



BELGIUM Royaume de Belgique. Rapport presents a M. le Ministre de V Industrie 

et du Travail. [Report made to the Belgian Minister of Commerce and 
Labor.] Travail de Nuit des Ouvrieres de l' Industrie dans les Pays 
Etrangers. [Night Work of Women in Industry in Foreign Countries.] 
Maurice Ansiaux. Brussels, 1898. 

With reference to the French law of 1892: 

It has been often stated to me that the general effect of the law was a 
diminution of employment of women, a diminution which otherwise would 
not have been noticeable. 

Nevertheless on the whole the number of adult women and young 
women of ages 18 to 21, employed in industry, — that is to say the number 



EFFECT ON SCOPE OF WOMEN S WORK 



393 



of female workers subject for the first time in 1892 to legal regulation — BELGroM 
has increased both absolutely and relatively. That at least is what ap- 
pears to result from a comparison of the years 1893 to 1895. In 1893 the 
number of female workers of more than 18 years was 338,486; the year 
following it was 412,400; in 1895 it was 445,712; the increase was re- 
spectively 78,914 and 33,312; these figures are surely considerable. In 
1894 the female labor force of all ages represented 32.8 per cent of all 
French workers; in 1895 this proportion reached 33.6 per cent. These facts 
would seem to contradict the assertion reproduced above. (Pages 34-35.) 
The fact is, far from decreasing, the number of women working in 
regulated establishments (in Germany) has continually increased since 
the enactment of the law of 1891, and a very marked ratio, as the follow- 
ing table shows. 





Total No. 
of Women 
Workers of 
21 years 
and over in 
all Industries 


Total No. 
of Women 
Workers of 
More than 
16 Years in 
all Industries 


Textiles 


Women More than 21 in 


Years 


Paper and 
Leather 


Food 
Prepara- 
tions 


Clothing 


1892 
1893 
1894 
1895 


346,795 
367,411 
383,094 
403,813 


576,433 
616,620 
633,783 
664,116 


170,002 
186,225 
192,439 
202,644 


21,321 

22,233 
23,462 
24,533 


49,055 
53,091 
55,968 
59,501 


24,855 
27,573 
28,830 
29,548 



M. Morgenstern, chief of inspection of the kingdom of Saxony, has 
communicated to me an interesting set of statistics comprising the years 
1890 to 1896 inclusive, thus embracing a period of time more extensive 
than the general table above and therefore meriting reproduction here. 

It follows that from 1890 to 1896, the total number of persons occupied 
in industry in Saxony increased 87,144, of whom 32,373 were adult women. 
(Pages 234-236.) 



Years 


Number of Adult 
Women 


Total of all 
' Workers 


1890 

1891 

1892 


105,492 
107,756 
110,222 
120,212 
123,309 
128,375 
137,865 


369,258 
371.541 
364,636 


1893 


394 426 


1894 


404,010 


1895 


420,499 


1896 


456,402 



394 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Schriften der Gesellschaft fiir So^iale Reform, Heft 7-8. {Publications of the 
Social Reform Society, Nos. 7-8.] Die Herabset^ung der Arbeits^eit 
fiir Frauen und die Erhohung des Schutialters fiir Jugendliche Arbeiter 
in Fabriken. [The Reduction of IVomen's JVorking Hours and the 
Raising of the Legal IVorking Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The reports of factory inspectors for 1894 showed that as a result of the 
establishment of a maximum day women had only been dismissed in those 
industries where they had been on night work, now forbidden for women. 
Moreover, in many factories which had previously made extensive prac- 
tice of overtime, additional women workers were taken on. (Page 75.) 

Bulletinof the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909. Women 
and Child Wage-Earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, Ph.D. 

When the early factory laws of Great Britain went into force women 
workers opposed provisions in the factory acts limiting their hours of 
work for fear that such limitation would lead to the displacement of women 
by men. Women had been substituted for children in textile mills when 
the hours of the latter were first limited, and it was perhaps natural that 
the women should fear being in turn supplanted. But while the factory 
law has doubtless caused some redistribution of employment among work- 
ers of different age and sex it has not upon the whole lessened the demand 
for female labor. 

It is true that there has been a decrease in the proportion of the female 
population working in industrial occupations since the factory acts first 
went into force, but there has been an increase precisely in those occupa- 
tions where those acts might have been expected to have most influence. 
The following table gives the number of female employees in every thou- 
sand workers in several of the more important industries where the hours 
of labor have been restricted by factory legislation, by 10-year periods, 
from 1861 to 1901. 



Number of Females in Every 1000 Employees, by Industries, 1861 to 1901 



Industry 



Bookbinding 

Boots and shoes 

Cotton manufactures 

Pottery and porcelain 

Tailoring 

Tobacco manufactures 

Woolen and worsted manufactures 



1861 


1871 


1881 


1891 


450 


488 


527 


554 


154 


115 


160 


185 


567 


598 


620 


609 


311 


354 


384 


385 


208 


254 


330 


427 


221 


296 


435 


548 


461 


513 


561 


557 



603 
210 
628 
392 
471 
601 
582 



EFFECT ON WOMEN S WAGES 395 

The influence of the factory law in discouraging child employment united 

STATES 

has been re-enforced by the growing complexity of mdustry, which places 
a greater premium upon mature and intelligent workers. (Page 67.) 

There is a prevalent opinion in England that the proportion of women is 
increasing in the industries. Commenting upon this, the chief lady statis- 
tician of the Board of Trade says that this is due to the entry into the labor 
market of middle-class women, who engage in new occupations, and to the 
substitution of skilled workers employed full time for a larger number of 
unskilled workers intermittently employed. (Page 67.) 

E. Effect on Women s IV ages 

Wherever the legal regulation of women's working hours 
has been long enough established to show any effect on their 
wages, statistical evidence tends to show that wages are 
not decreased but increased by the limitation of hours. In 
some cases there may be temporary decrease for a short 
time, before industry adjusts itself to a change in hours, 
but after a short period the gain in the workers' efficiency 
from shorter hours and their consequent increase in output 
completely balances the curtailment of their working time. 
Women's wages are universally higher in the industries sub- 
ject to legal limitation of hours, than they are in the un- 
protected trades. 

Moreover, even when regulation has resulted in a slight 
temporary decrease in wages, the majority of workers have 
willingly suffered the slight reduction, in order to gain the 
increased health and leisure consequent upon shorter hours 
of labor. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1849. Reports of Inspectors of great 
Factories for Half-year ending 30th April, 1849. Britain 

Referring more particularly to the Cotton district, it may be premised 
that, shortly before the passing of the Ten Hours Act, a general reduction 
in the rate of wages, to the extent of 10 per cent, was adopted by the mas- 
ters, and submitted to by the work people; but this did not produce, even 
at that critical moment, any remonstrances on the part of the work people 
against the law, which was then impending over them, for further limiting 



39^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT their hours of work, whence it may be inferred that they had calculated 

BRPTAIN 

not only what would be its effects upon their earnings in the factories, but 
also how it would affect their condition in other particulars. . . . 

From the inquiries which I have made, I find it indeed, to be generally 
represented that, notwithstanding this reduction in the rate of wages and 
the abridgment of the hours of work, the Ten Hours Act has not effected 
any diminution in the earnings of the work people which is not practically 
counterbalanced by some equivalent advantages which they gain from the 
shortening of the working day. In the first place, it would seem that the 
diminution in the amount of net wages, actually received in cash at the 
end of the week or fortnight, is by no means proportioned to the reduction 
in the number of the hours of labour; for it is stated that the "two last" 
hours of the 12 were not those in which the greatest energy, activity, and 
vigilance were available; that, by shortening the day, the hands are now 
enabled, in 10 hours, to do more work, and to it better, than they could in 
the first 10 hours of a longer working day; that by improvements in the 
construction as well as by accelerating the speed of the machinery, a 
greater amount of work is turned off in the same time than before, that, 
in fact, they get through their work with more hearty good-will, with 
greater care and attention, and in better spirits, and that, by turning their 
work better out of hand, their earnings are not diminished by so many 
abatements, stoppages, and fines for negligence and for bad or damaged 
work, as used to curtail their receipts under the system of longer 
hours. . . . 

Furthermore, it is stated, that any diminution in the amount of wages 
earned at the factory, is fully compensated by what is gained in other 
wages; thus the females are now enabled to attend to various household 
duties, which must be discharged by some one, and for which, under the 
system of long hours at the factory, they had been obliged to pay for the 
services of a hireling, that the money formerly spent in this way is now 
saved by the leisure afforded to the females of a family, under the 10 
hours' system, which enables them to perform their own duties themselves; 
and that it is this saving of expenditure at home, which in great measure 
enables them to withstand a diminished rate of wages, accompanied by 
shorter hours of work. (Pages 19-20.) 

Ihid. Appendix. Evidence of the Opinions of Persons Employed in Fac- 
tories, Respecting the Ten Hours Act, Collected in September, October, 
and November, 1848. 

Cotton Mill A. No. 2, Manager, and No. 3, Bookkeeper, spoken to- 
gether: . . . added, that the spinners are making nearly as much (in 10 



EFFECT ON WOMEN S WAGES 397 

hours) as they did when working 12 hours, partly by a little increased great 
speed, partly by some improvements in the machinery, but chiefly by ^^^'^^^^ 
greater attention and economy of time; that by shortening the hours they 
are able to keep up their exertions. (Page 27.) 

Nos. 29, 30, 31, 32. Adult males. Mule spinners. All said they 
would much rather work 10 hours with less wages than go back to 12 with 
higher. "No one who has felt the good of the 10 hours would willingly 
go back to 12." They said that they have better appetites and better 
health. (Page 28.) 

Cotton Mill F. No. 16. Manager. . . . Many of the hands in this 
mill make nearly as much as they used to do; there has been no alteration 
in the speed of the machinery, "but they stick closer to their work." 
(Page 27.) 

Nos. 75 and 76. Adult males. Weavers. Say, that there is not so 
much difference in the amount of work they can turn off, so that their 
wages have not been much less than when they worked 12 hours; they 
make it up by increased exertion, and they do not find themselves so 
much fatigued by thus working more closely as they were by the long day's 
work. (Page 29.) 

Cotton Mill W. No. 89. Owner. Afterwards added since the 10 
hour restriction began, they have paid the overlookers by piecework in- 
stead of fixed wages as formerly, and they are making nearly as much in 
the 10 as they did in 12. That by their greater vigilance in looking after 
the workers the produce has been increased. (Page 30.) 

Cotton Mill E. No. 14. Mill-owner. Extract from letter to Mr. 
Horner, dated 18th October, 1848: 

. . . My weavers do not suffer in their wages to the extent of reduction 
in the working hours. I pay more money now than I formerly did in 
proportion to the time worked. I account for this by unusual exertion 
on the part of the work people, coupled with greater strength for the 
work, from having more time to recruit themselves. (Page 37.) 

No. 143. Overlooker of the card room. ... He was not averse to 
the reduction either in time or wages, and remarked that "towards the 
close of the 12 hours' day, he could not do his duty satisfactorily, as the 
hands were too much jaded to attend to their work, and many of them 
fast asleep." He added, "that there is not half the number off sick since 
the 10 hours have been worked, that the hands work more cheerfully, 
and that there is less trouble in keeping them up to it." He had never 
heard one express a wish to return to longer hours. For his own part, he 
declared, that although he now has less money to spend, there is much 
greater happiness in his family. (Page 72.) 



39^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT No. 218. Adult female. Reeler: She much prefers the 10 hours, 

BRITAIN , , , , . , , WTTM • , 

although she receives less wages, and says, What is the use of getting 
more money if I have no appetite or other means of enjoying it?" After 
working 12 hours she was so tired and weak at the close of the day that 
she could never do anything at home. (Page 76.) 

No. 219. Adult female. Winder: Said that she was always sick when 
working 12 hours a day, but now that she is less in the factory her health 
is quite recruited. She would rather work the present hours, however 
small the wages. (Page 76.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1860. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories for half-year ending 31st Oct., 1859. 

Two other arguments formerly in great repute with the opponents of 
" any Factory Bill these Acts have entirely refuted; the one the certain 
reduction of wages concurrent with the reduction of the working hours; 
the other, the "pro-rata" limit which the same reduction of hours would 
place upon the textile production of the country to the disparagement of 
our commerce. In no branch of textile labor are wages reduced since 
1833, but there is an average increase of 12 per cent and in one instance of 
40 per cent. I do not mean to say that whole branches of manual labor 
have not ceased, nor to deny that machinery has replaced it here and 
there, but if it has other branches of industry have supervened. (Page 
53.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vols. XXIX and XXX. 1876. Factories and 
IVorkshops Acts Commission. 

Vol. XXX. Minutes of Evidence: 

5310. If you reduce the hours that women may work by 5 per cent, 
21 women will be required to do the work that 20 women do now, there 
will be a greater demand for women's labour and women's wages ought 
to go up 5 per cent in value so that so long as the restrictions are not 
excessive it seems to me that they will benefit the women pecuniarily. 
(Page 267.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIX. Part I. 1893. Royal Com- 
mission on Labour. Minutes of Evidence, 

Mr. Henry Meyers Hyndman: 

8411. The trades which are best paid to-day are precisely those that 



EFFECT ON WOMEN's WAGES 399 

work the shortest hours, and as was got out by one member of the com- g^^jj 
mission on inquiry of Mr. Giffen, it appeared that during the last 20 years, 
although undoubtedly the hours have been consistently reduced, es- 
pecially in the higher skilled trades, such as the engineers and so forth, the 
amount of wages which have been paid has increased. (Page 595.) 

A Few Words on the Ten Hours Factory Question. Edmund R. Larkin, 
M.A. London, Richardson, 1846. 

It is consolatory and encouraging to find that so far as experience can 
be a guide to us in determining this important question, it goes to prove 
that the diminution of profits and wages would not be so great under a 
system of shortened time, as to deter us from making trial of this great 
social experiment. . . . The trial has been made, not indeed of reduction 
to Ten, but to Eleven hours of work; and the result has been not merely 
so slight a diminution of produce as to justify a further experiment, but 
no diminution whatever thereof, nor, consequently, of the wages of the 
producers. (Pages 21-22.) 

Labour Laws for Women. Their Reason and their Results. London, 
Independent Labour Party, 1900. 

Then as to the lowering of wages, though women's wages are deplorably 
low now, as a whole they have risen since the time of the first Factory 
Acts. Again, it is impossible to prove definitely either that they would 
have been higher or lower without regulation, but it is a very important 
and significant fact that if we want to instance the most horribly low pay, 
we have to go to the home industries, where the hours are absolutely un- 
limited. . . . While for the highest wages, and the wages which have 
steadily increased for the past fifty years, we go to the highly regulated 
textile factories, and the most skilled branches of such work as bookbind- 
ing which is also subject to regulations. But the argument that it is the 
special legal restrictions on women's labour which keep down their wages, 
is completely settled by the fact that where men and women work under 
practically the same conditions which are not difi'erently afi'ected by the 
law, the women's wages are lower than the men's. (Page 15.) 

In fact the absence of limitation of hours is the very thing which the 
greedy or careless employer uses to screw more work out of his workers 
for the same pay, or to let his work be so disorganized that the women 
waste hours doing nothing, and then make up by overtime. This kind 
of over-driving most effectually lowers wages, for it exhausts the workers. 



400 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT and renders them unfit for their work, and they either do it badly and have 

BRITAIN 

to accept less pay, or become ill, and so lose employment. (Page 16.) 

The primary evils of women's work, as we have tried to point out, lie 
in its casual and unsettled nature, and regulation tends to steady it, and 
so to make it more effective. . . . Though the limiting of hours . . . 
may not seem directly to raise her wages, it does so indirectly, because a 
rise in the standard of employment at one point really raises it all round; 
and it is not an accident but direct cause and effect that such regulations 
and good wages go together and vice versa. (Pages 20-22.) 

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Vol. LXV. 1902. Factory 
Legislation considered with reference to the Wages, etc., of the Opera- 
tives protected thereby. George Henry Wood. 

In summing up the impressions gathered from the foregoing review, 
we fmd that in one or two cases the limitation of hours of labour by 
Factory Acts has, for the time being, reduced wages, especially of time 
workers, but that as soon as the industry affected has become settled under 
the new conditions, wages have risen to a higher point than previous to 
the passing of the Act, and that this has been ascribed by competent 
observers to the increased efficiency of the operative and the increased 
intensity of the work. (Pages 305-306.) 

During the era of Factory Legislation, that is, since the "Ten Hours'* 
Act, and its extension, in a more or less modified form, to other industries 
than textiles, women's wages have risen by about 66 per cent, while the 
average increase for the United Kingdom is about 45 per cent. . . . 
But the chief point to be noticed is that factory legislation has not lowered 
wages, but has been accompanied by a decided and progressive increase. 
How far this legislation has caused this increase I am not prepared to say, 
but in so much as by reducing hours of labour, raising the minimum age 
of entrance to the factory and so insuring a certain amount of education, 
improving the sanitary and other accommodations of the worker, and 
regulating dangerous trades it has increased the standard of efficiency and 
encouraged a higher standard of living; it seems to have been a factor 
making for the increase. (Pages 308-309.) 

We may now shortly summarize in a few words what we have seen. 
It is not certain that there is always a direct connection between Factory 
Legislation and women's wages, but as a rule the effect of each limitation 
of the hours of labour has been to raise wages, though for a while they 
may have fallen a little. This usually operates through an increase in 
the efficiency of labour, which maintains or increases the former output 



EFFECT ON WOMEN S WAGES 4OI 

in the lessened hours. While such an increased efficiency is maintained, great 



the expenses of production are not increased, and no damage is done to 
foreign trade in the product of the industry affected. ... All these 
effects have been for the general good, — women have shared in the progress 
of the past sixty years, and their wages have risen with men's but at a 
faster rate and more consistently. (Page 313.) 

Report of the 72nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science. 1902. London, Murray, 1903. IVomen's Labour. 
Second Report of the Comr/iittee . . . appointed to investigate the 
Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labour. 

... To the third question (whether legislation restricting women's 
labour has raised or lowered wages) the answer (from the employers) 
was in almost every instance that wages had not been affected. Many 
were agreed that the legislation on the whole had improved health, and 
consequently efficiency. (Page 290.) 

Report of the 73rd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement 
of Science. 1903. London, Murray. 1904. Women's Labour. 
Third Report of the Committee . . . appointed to investigate the Eco- 
nomic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labour. 

The experience of a merino factory in Nottinghamshire is very interest- 
ing: "The reduction of hours in 1875 did not reduce wages. The men and 
girls at first asked for a rise of piece prices as compensation for an antici- 
pated loss. The employer promised to consider it in a while, if the loss 
actually took place and became permanent. In 4 weeks it was found, 
however, that earnings were equal in 56>^ hours to what they had been 
in the previous 60-hour week. To the employer there was, in the winter, 
an actual gain, as the same work being done in 3>^ hours less, and the 
hours not worked being taken off the evening when artificial light was 
needed, less gas was burnt. The same firm reduced to 55>^ hours volun- 
tarily in 1900, and again no loss was occasioned to the operatives." 
(Page 338.) 

Women's Wages in England in the Nineteenth Century. Women's Industrial 
Council, London, 1906. 

The calculations made by Mr. G. H. Wood, F.S.S., demonstrate the 
important fact of a steady rise in women's wages in those industries for 
which we have reliable information. It is significant that those industries 
26* 



BRITAIN 



402 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT are precisely those which have been most peculiarly influenced by the 

BRITAIN . 

Factory Act. It was formerly in cotton that the hours were longest, 
the toil most strenuous, and the conditions most entirely subject to un- 
restricted competition; it was cotton that was first put under State con- 
trol, it was the textile industry that was so seriously threatened by legal 
regulations that over and over again social reformers were accused of 
driving trade from the country. Yet in textiles and most especially in 
cotton the improvement in women's wages has been extremely marked. 
Without wishing to claim that the rise in wages has been due to the opera- 
tion of the Factory Act, for it is no doubt due to many complex causes, 
we may point out that wages have certainly not been reduced under the 
Act, except quite temporarily here and there. In recent years, however, 
the line of opposition to factory regulation has taken up the wages argu- 
ment on different lines. 

It is more usual now to throw up the attack altogether as regards 
highly organized industries like cotton, and to say that legal regulation 
does no harm, has even been a success, in highly organized textile in- 
dustries, where women are strong enough to bear it, but that in the non- 
textile, less fully developed industries, unless women may work at night, 
and overtime, and so on, they are at a great disadvantage, and will either 
be superseded by men or lose in wages. But I do not think there is any 
sign of women being superseded by men in non-textile industries, for the 
last census shows a larger increase in non-textile than in textile trades; 
and as to wages, surely the opponents of Factory Legislation cannot be 
allowed to use their arguments backwards and forwards as they choose. 
They used to say, you must not legislate for cotton, the workers are so 
poor they will starve; yet now that cotton has been regulated and the 
women, so far from starving, get higher wages than they used, the cry is 
that the cotton trade is so strong and the women so well paid, even the 
Factory Act cannot pull down their wages, it is on the other industries it 
falls so heavily. But it is rather significant that the longest regulated 
and most strictly regulated industry is the very one that shows so great a 
rate of improvement, and we need not be afraid that the status of laundry 
women, or even of home workers, will be injured by stricter regulation or 
stricter administration of the existing law; perhaps, on the contrary, 
their wages also will rise. (Pages 3-4.) 

... As Mr. Wood's table shows, increasing strictness of administra- 
tion has not hindered a considerable rise in wages. It is not certain that 
there is a direct connection between factory control and women's wages, 
but as a rule the sequel of each limitation of hours has been a rise of wages, 
though for a while there may have been a slight fall. The rise is partly 



EFFECT ON WOMEN S WAGES 403 

due to progressive restrictions on child labour, which have increased the great 

BRITAIN 

demand for women's labour, and partly to an increase in the efficiency of 
labour, which maintains or increases the former output in the shortened 
time. There are certain manufacturing industries where the masters 
voluntarily work 9 hours or even 8 instead of 10, because they find they 
can get better work done. In these cases the reduction is not directly 
due to the Factory Act but to considerations of economic efficiency. 
(Pages 5-6.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1871. united 

^ ■> J J STATES 

I have worked what is called ten hours a day, and the ten-hour system 
always has a good influence on the work-people. We don't lose one- 
eleventh of the pay — everybody knows that. I didn't lose a single cent, 
because I didn't get so much exhausted. (Page 498.) 

To prove the soundness of the ten-hour claim, the operatives instance 
the reduction in the past, from sixteen to fourteen, to thirteen and to 
twelve, and from twelve to eleven hours. They also point to the twenty- 
one years' experience in Great Britain, where the reduction was made in 
1850 from twelve to ten, a reduction of one-sixth of the working day. 
(Pages 557-558.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1881. 

It is apparent . . . that wages here rule as high if not higher than in 
the States where the mills run longer time (i. e., than ten hours a day). 
(Page 457.) 

Still another case is that of a carpet mill employing about seventeen 
hundred persons. Twenty-five years ago the hours were reduced directly 
from twelve to ten. . . . The establishment has been run by the same 
management from then till now, without a break and with great success; 
and yet the average pay in it is higher than in any other mill, with possibly 
one or two exceptions, which we found. (Page 460.) 

The Willimantic Linen Company of Connecticut ran its mills eleven 
hours per day till about two years ago, when it was determined as an 
experiment to run ten hours. . . . Wages have remained intact so far as 
the hours of labor are concerned. (Page 461.) 

... It was quite generally conceded (by manufacturers) that even 
if, at first, there was a reduction of wages, yet by a year's time (only one 
person said more) the market would have readjusted itself, and the 
wages for ten hours would have become the same as they were before 



404 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED for eleven. A half-owner of six mills stated the case thus: "If all the 

STATES j^jjjg would run but ten hours, there would be a diminution in the product 

of perhaps five per cent. That slight diminution would after a while so 
empty the market that prices would rise much more than five per cent, 
and so we could pay the same prices for ten as now for eleven hours' 
work, and then make more money than we are now making." And the 
principle involved in this statement was very generally conceded by manu- 
facturers. . . . That is, a large portion of the manufacturers have come 
to see, what is undoubtedly true, that the width of the margin between 
cost and price, and so the possible amount of wages which can be paid, 
are not so much determined by the volume of the product alone, as by 
the relation between the amount produced and the amount consumed. 
(Pages 462-463.) 

Within a year's time the market would adjust itself entirely to the 
■ " shorter day, the operatives would have as good a living with ten, as now 
with eleven, eleven and a half, and twelve hours. (Page 464.) 

Report of the New Jersey Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industry. 1886. 

The Factory Acts were believed to be the death-blow to English manu- 
factures, and they have made labor more efficient, more intelligent, more 
decent, and more continuous without trenching on profits. (Page 231, 
footnote.) 

In 1851 and 1852 those who advocated that ten hours should be a 
legal day's work were denounced as demagogues, and the ten-hour plan 
as a humbug which could only tend to reduce the wages proportionately, 
while all kinds of evil results were sure to follow its application, especially 
to agricultural labor. But we have seen ten hours become the rule; wages 
have not fallen, and many of those who prophesied disaster are now as 
loud in their praises of its beneficence as the friends of the change. (Page 
232.) 

Report of the New York Factory Inspectors. 1894. 

This material reduction (from 10 to 15 per cent in many industries) 
in the working time was not accompanied by any reduction in the pay 
of those interested. (Pages 31-32.) 

Report of New York Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1900. 

In all those departments of the factory in which wages are paid by 
piece-work — and these constitute probably not less than four-fifths of 



EFFECT ON WOMEN S WAGES 



405 



the whole, the proportion to fixed daily wages being daily on the increase ^^ited 
— it has been found that the quantity produced in ten and one-half hours 
falls little short of that formerly obtained from twelve hours. In some 
cases it is said to be equal. This is accounted for partly by the increased 
stimulus given to ingenuity to make the machines more perfect and 
capable of increased speed, but it arises far more from the workpeople by 
improved health, by absence of that weariness and exhaustion which the 
long hours occasioned, and by their increased cheerfulness and activity, 
being enabled to work more steadily and diligently and to economize 
time, intervals of rest while at their work being now less necessary. 
(Pages 49-50.) 



Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 80. January, 1909. 
IVoman and Child Wage-Earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

It is no longer argued by people familiar with industrial history that 
shorter hours necessarily mean lower wages. But this argument was 
used extensively when the earlier British acts were passed. Here again, 
as in case of the shortening of hours, it is difficult to separate the effect of 
state regulation from the effect of other causes, but the upward tendency 
of the wages of women and children during the past century is a matter 
of statistical verification. The following table gives the most authorita- 
tive statement of the increase of the wages of women since 1820. The 
table shows the average relative wages of all women wage-earners, by 
decades, as stated in percentages of the average wage during the ten years 
ending with 1900. To show that there was more than a normal increase 
in women's wages, as compared with the wages of unregulated men's 
labor, the relative wages of workers of both sexes combined, using the 
decade ending with 1900 as the base, is given in a parallel column. 

Relative Wages in the United Kingdom, 1820 to 1900 



Decade Ending 


Relative Women 
Employees 


Wages of Employees 
of Both Sexes 


1830 


58 
56 
58 
62 
75 
93 
95 
100 


65 


1840 


60 


1850 


60 


1860 . . .... 


65 


1870. . 


75 


1880 


95 


1890 


90 


1900 


100 



406 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED Between 1830 and 1850 women's wages may have declined less than 

STATES 

those of men because they were already near the subsistence level. An 
English authority, to whom these statistics are due, says: "Factory 
legislation has not lowered wages, but has been accompanied by a decided 
and progressive increase." It is not to be understood that factory laws 
are given as the cause of this increase, but they may have contributed to 
it by improving the efficiency of workers. 

The wages of women in industries regulated by the factory acts are 
generally better than those in unregulated industries. Among the best- 
paid women factory workers of England are the cotton operatives of 
Lancashire. This condition, however, is probably less an effect of the 
larw than of the fact that the law happens to apply to a better grade of 
workers. (Pages 53-54.) 

Trades may be mentioned, like some kinds of decorating and polishing, 
where neither machinery nor labor unions have influenced conditions, in 
which wages have risen as working hours grew fewer. But workers in 
these trades were benefited by the rising standard of living of their fellow- 
workers in other industries, and their rate of compensation was affected 
by the competition for labor caused by high wages in other occupations. 

The statistics available indicate that the enactment of the successive 
laws shortening the hours of labor did not, in the particular industries 
affected, interrupt the progressive improvement of wages that has marked 
the last century. (Page 55.) 

The Arena. Vol. XXIV. 1900. New York, Alliance, 1900. The 
Eight-Hour Day by Legislation. Edwin Maxey, Southern Normal 
University, Tenn. 

According to the best authorities wages are more likely to be raised 
than lowered, though it is possible they may remain stationary. . . . 
New York State witnessed, in 1887, 2,256 strikes for shorter hours, and 
in every one of the trades where a reduction of hours was obtained a 
positive increase in wages is also reported. In 1860, six years after the 
enactment of the ten-hour law in Massachusetts, as a result of an argu- 
ment made before the legislative committee by Edward Atkinson, who 
had always been an active opponent of the law on the ground that its 
operation was injurious to the working man (as they had to work for one- 
eleventh less than similar laborers in other States), the legislators ordered 
the Labor Bureau to investigate the hours of labor and wages paid in 
Massachusetts, the other New England States, and New York. This 
was done, and the result was as follows: 



ADAPTATION OF CUSTOMERS 



407 



Maine, average hours 66| 


average wages per 


week, $7.04 


New Hampshire " 66} 


" " " 


" 7.44 


Connecticut " 66^ 


" " " 


" 7.81 


Rhode Island " 66 


" " " 


" 8.01 


New York " 65^ 


" " " 


" 7.57 


Massachusetts " 60 


" " " 


" 8.32 



UNITED 
STATES 



The result of this investigation — proving as it did that the average 
wage in Massachusetts was 65 cents more for 5>2 hours less per week than 
the average in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 
New York — was far more eloquent than any words Mr. Atkinson could 
utter. (Pages 236-237.) 



F. Adaptation of Customers to Shorter Hours 

Experience shows how the demands of customers yield 
to the requirements of a fixed working day. When cus- 
tomers are obliged to place orders sufficiently in advance 
to enable them to be filled without necessitating overtime 
work, compliance with this habit becomes automatic. 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XXIX-XXX. 1876. Factory and IVork- great 
shops Acts Commission. Vol. XXIX. Report. 

A very large number of the orders of customers, which it has been 
usual to keep back till the last minute, and then throw upon the already 
fully burdened workers, not merely can be quite as easily given so as to 
have plenty of time for their completion, but also will be so given, and 
are in fact so given, when and so often as the customer is made to recog- 
nize that he otherwise runs the risk of not having his orders completed in 
time to suit his own convenience. It is from their feeling that this is so 
that the workers in some of the most overworked of trades, and a few of 
the sub-inspectors, have represented to us that what is needed from a 
reform of the Factory Acts is not a further restriction of hours, but the 
total abolition of all modifications whatever. We so far concur in this 
that we believe it is not necessary to retain in all the Acts any provi- 
sions by way of relaxation which it is unadvisable to grant once and for 
all to the whole trade. We trust in time that the use of overtime in 
trades of this class may be restricted down to the vanishing point. (Pages 
xli-xlii.) 



408 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of Chief Inspector 

of Factories and Workshops. 

Most of the employers with whom I have discussed the matter confirm 
my own impression that overtime working does not pay (that is, when 
the rate of wages is the same for overtime as for regular working hours), 
but that it is so important not to disappoint a customer that it has to be 
done. ... I am sure there is nothing, beyond habit, in the nature of the 
trade to make overtime a necessity, and if women fmd out by 1 or 2 dis- 
appointments that a dress ordered, for instance, on Thursday, cannot be 
received finished on Saturday, they will soon find it possible to order it a 
little sooner. (Pages 15-16.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XI. 1900. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops for the Year 1899. 

I am glad to be able to report that it is exceptional, and increasingly 
so, to find employers and supervisors of labor who do not recognize that 
overtime is injurious both to employers and employed. They deplore, 
and I believe in general sincerely, the necessity when it arises. They 
point out that they have little power to alter the mode in which orders 
reach them. It is the habits of buyers which in most cases make overtime 
necessary. 

There seems reason to hope nevertheless that the curtailment of over- 
time by the Factory Acts will indirectly put such pressure on the buyers 
that they will gradually alter their methods of purchase. 

The Eight Hours Day. Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, B.A. London, 
Walter Scott, 1891. 

We come now to the trades "where sudden press of orders arises from 
unforeseen events." Here our position is one of complete scepticism. 
The sudden press of orders arises only because overtime is permitted. 
If it were known beforehand that excessive hours of work were absolutely 
forbidden, then the general public and the shopkeepers would make their 
arrangements accordingly. If, for example, Jones knows that, owing to 
the operation of an Eight Hours' Act, a pair of trousers cannot possibly 
be made in less than three days he will take care to give three clear days' 
notice to his tailor. Or to take a still more homely illustration, the house- 
wife who knows that she cannot buy bread on Sunday will take care to 
order a double supply on Saturday. In the same way, if the biscuit trade, 
the fancy box trade, and the artificial flower trade were subject to the 



ADAPTATION OF CUSTOMERS 4O9 

same rigid law as the cotton trade, every one would soon accommodate great 



himself or herself to the necessities of the case. Orders would be given 
longer in advance, and the work would be spread more equally over the 
whole year, to the great advantage of the workers. 

In support of this contention we cannot do better than quote the 
opinion of Mr. Lakeman. This most energetic of factory inspectors has 
frequently stated, as the result of his long experience in watching almost 
every industry in the kingdom, that overtime is in most trades an utterly 
unnecessary evil. For a particular illustration we may further appeal to 
the opinion of the head of a large firm of tobacco manufacturers in South- 
wark. This gentleman informed one of the present writers in the course 
of conversation that he always refused to allow overtime. "Possibly," 
he said, "we lose a few orders in consequence, but we get a more regular 
and steady business, and we prefer it." Nor would even the few orders 
be lost if the rule applied to all competing firms. (Pages 161-163.) 

The JVomen's Industrial News. London, March, 1901. Season Trades' 
Conference. 

In regard to causes of irregularity, while some of these are evidently 
inherent and unavoidable, there appear to be others which might be re- 
moved. One of these is the practice — which unquestionably, to some 
extent, exists — of deliberately holding back the orders of customers until 
the busy period. There are reasons for which this practice comes cheaper 
to the employer, the chief of these being the very largely prevalent custom 
of not paying for overtime. 

In regard to remedies . . . one Londoner suggested that the workers 
ought to combine to insist upon pay for overtime and to resist infringe- 
ments of the Factory Act. Some evidence had come before the Com- 
mittee which seemed to show that the restriction of hours by law had 
tended, by forcing customers to allow longer time for the fulfilment of 
their orders, and enabling employers to declare themselves unable to get 
work done in a hurry, to diminish overpressure. (Pages 220-221.) 

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutch ins and Amy Harrison. 
fVestminster, King, 1903. 

Tremenheere then took the opinion of certain of the merchants on this 
point, and found them much more favorable to the extension of the 
Factory Act. ... A limitation of hours might, it was admitted, occasion- 
ally produce inconvenience, but this would by degrees adjust itself. 



BRITAIN 



4IO 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



Merchants would have to think of their orders a little beforehand. . . . 
One bleacher very candidly admitted that knowing the bleacher would 
undertake to bleach and finish one thousand pieces of cloth in five days 
he often, in cases of sudden orders, gave him only five days to do it in; 
but that, if the hours of the boys and women working were restricted so 
he would know the work could not be accomplished in that time, he 
should have to make his arrangements beforehand to give seven or ten 
days, or to send part of the order to another bleacher. It was pointed 
out that if a bleacher lost part of an order on one occasion it would be 
made up to him on another, and that very possibly the bleachers would 
enlarge their works and keep more hands ready. If legislation were alike 
for all, the outlay would do the trade no harm. Tremenheere arrived at 
the conclusion that a limitation of women's and boys' hours would cause 
the masters to enlarge their works and improve their machinery rather 
than chance losing an order. ... In 1857 . . . the mere anticipation of 
some such measure had caused additions to be made both to buildings and 
machinery which would considerably augment the firms' power of getting 
speedily through an increased quantity. (Page 134.) 



FRANCE i^g Travail de Nuit dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son importance et sa 
reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. [Night Work 
of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and legal regu- 
lation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] L' Interdiction du Travail 
de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie frangaise. [Prohibition of Night 
Work of Women in French Industry.] M. P. Pic, University of Lyon. 
Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The question of evening overtime was made the subject of a thorough- 
going discussion in the general meeting of the French section (of the 
Association for Labor Legislation), and it was the conviction of the very 
large majority of those present that the suppression of evening overtime 
would not encounter insurmountable practical difficulties; that the pros- 
perity of dressmaking and similar establishments would be in no degree 
compromised if all were subjected to an identical and invariable regulation 
permitting no exceptions, for the clientele would be compelled to moderate 
its demands and submit to a law socially important, before which individual 
caprice must give way. (Page 210.) 



GERMANY Schriften der Gesellschaft fiir Sopale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publications of 
the Social Reform Society, Nos. 7-8.] Die Herabset^ung der Arbeits- 
leit fiir Frauen und die Erhohung des Schutialters fiir jugendliche 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 4I I 

Arheiter in Fabriken. [The Reduction of IVomens Working Hours and GERMANY 
the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

In Germany . . . since 1893, there are employers who, after the enact- 
ment of legal restrictions upon overtime gave it up altogether and have 
given assurances that their businesses have remained prosperous. " Many 
employers (1894) put a stop to overtime, because it had absolutely no 
advantages. ' ' Moreover, the objections made to giving up overtime have 
been refuted by experience. Many of the German inspectors . . . have 
expressed their conviction that overtime in factories should be completely 
abolished and that industry would be able to adapt itself without detri- 
ment to such a regulation. (Page 119.) 



V. UNIFORMITY OF RESTRICTION 

A. Allowance of Overtime Dangerous to Health 

All the dangers of long working hours to the health of 
workingwomen are increased, and the need of limiting 
such hours emphasized, by the system of overtime, when 
evening work is required after the regular day's work. 
The special dangers to health from overtime are: 

(1) The Excessive Length of Hours great 

BRITAIN 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXVIII. 1844. Reports of Inspectors 
of Factories. Quarterly Report for Period ending 30th September, 
1843. 

1 am equally well satisfied that persons are employed as adults, for 
very long hours, physically unfit for the work they are called upon to do, 
and often unwillingly on their part. In this remark I refer principally to 
females who have just completed the age of 18. 1 have seen many such 
employed for 13, 14, or 15 hours a day. . . . Some of these were em- 
ployed in a room at a high temperature. What constitution can stand 
against such labour? Its effects may not immediately be seen on all, but 
the evidence of every medical man I have consulted pronounces it must 
result in the most serious consequences to them in after-life. (Page 8.) 



412 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1893. Report of Chief Inspector 

BRITAIN ^j Factories and Workshops. 

Much of the good done by the Factory Act is undone by allowing deli- 
cate women and girls to work from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m. for 2 months of the 
year. (Page 92.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1897. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops for the Year 1896. 

Of the terrible injury resulting from the excessive hours which it is now 
so extremely diificult to control effectively in the South one example 
may suffice. I visited one hand laundry in London where a packer and 
sorter had been driven into a hospital with sores on her legs from long 
standing. . . . The girl eventually left the hospital on crutches, and at 
that time I found her successor on a fair way to losing her health also. 
In this case it has been possible to lessen the hours and improve the con- 
ditions to a certain extent. (Page 68.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XI. 1900. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops for the Year 1898. 

Early in 1898 Miss Squire made a full enquiry into the circumstances 
of employment in millinery workrooms attached to retail shops in South 
Wales. . . . She reported that workers regarded service in the shop after 
a day in the workroom as most exhausting and "more than any one ought 
to be allowed to do." She received numerous complaints from young 
women who gave evidence of being at the present time employed on Satur- 
days habitually in shop and workshop from 8 a. m. till 11 p. m. and very 
frequently until midnight and 12.30 a. m. Other persons complained that 
their friends had been so employed, and in two cases the girls were said to 
have returned to their homes in distant villages with health shattered, 
their condition being attributed by the doctor to overwork. (Page 180.) 

Complaint is constantly made to me by employees, their parents and 
friends, of the exhausting and injurious effect of work carried on in fac- 
tories and workshops without intermission from the end of dinner time 
until evening, that is either from 1 till 6 or 2 to 7. There is of course in 
these cases no breach of the Factory Act; the law allows a five-hours spell 
without a break, and this is not exceeded; often, indeed, the period of 
employment in the day is one hour short of the legal limit, and yet this 
five hours continuous work is a strain which I am convinced does tell 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 413 

seriously (especially where the work is done standing) upon the physical great 
powers of girls and young women. Their energy begins to flag about the ^^"^^^^ 
middle of the afternoon, and work drags on with ever decreasing speed and 
efficiency until 6 or 7 o'clock sets them free, outdoor things are put on, and 
the girls trudge home with half an hour's walk to the tea which they are 
too exhausted then to relish. In some factories the making and taking of 
a cup of tea during the five hours' spell of an afternoon is allowed while 
work goes on, and the brief change of attitude is appreciated no less than 
the refreshment, but where neatness and order are considered this picnic 
is naturally not permitted. That it is possible with good management to 
allow a break of fifteen minutes without interfering with work or discipline 
has been proved, and managers who have tried it have told me that the 
increased quantity and quality of the work done in the closing hours of 
the day have more than repaid the time expended in partaking of refresh- 
ment. (Page 181.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

Witness, Sir William S. Church, President of the Royal College of 
Physicians: 

2309. . . . There is one form of ailment which is aggravated by work 
such as shop assistants have to do. Those come rather under the observa- 
tion of surgeons and physicians who practice more especially in diseases of 
women. But there is another great group which fall under the observa- 
tion of the ordinary physician, and of which we see a very great deal in our 
London hospitals, and that is anaemic condition, which is produced partly 
by long hours of work, and still more so by the confinement that this em- 
ployment entails. They do not get sufficient opportunity for being in the 
fresh air and in the sunlight, and the evil is, of course, greatly aggravated 
by late hours at night. . . . (Page 108.) 

2319. . . . The longer the hours the greater the detriment. (Page 
109.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1903. Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops for 1902. 

Great discontent still exists among the laundry hands at the long hours 
which are legal. Quite recently I visited a laundry at 9.30 p. m., and 
found three young persons just leaving work, having been at it from 8 a. m. 
with \}4 hours for meals, and there were a number of women left to go on 



414 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT for another hour. I know the weekly total of hours is the same for laun- 

BRITAIN ^j.jgg ^g ^Qj. Qj.(5Jnary factories, but it is the abnormally long working day 

that is most trying to the workers. (Page 29.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1904. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

"A point of some importance which was mentioned to me by the medi- 
cal attendant at one factory (cigar) was that the number of cases under 
treatment for sickness varied pari passu with the amount of overtime 
work," i. e. over ten hours in one day. (Page 286.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1907 . Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops. Appendix II. Report on Tobacco, Cigar 
and Cigarette Industry. 

The question of the health of the workers has been the main object of 
our enquiry, and we have therefore given our attention chiefly to this 
point. It is impossible to consider the industry an unhealthy one. With 
the exception of one or two processes there has been little or no evidence 
to prove that the manufacture of tobacco is in itself injurious to health. 
. . . In six of the largest factories visited, a very complete system of 
preliminary medical examination was found to be carried out by the doc- 
tors specially appointed by the firms. . . . We have gained a great deal 
of information from these doctors, whose experience is almost unique. 
Our attention was drawn to a very interesting and important point by 
two of the doctors; their experience (which in one case has been tabulated) 
had led them to form the opinion that overtime has a very marked bearing 
on the normal health of the workers. They had noted an increase during 
and just after periods of overtime work of from one third to one half in 
the number of workers coming to them for treatment; the matters com- 
plained of were not anything special, but simply an increase in the usual 
form of ailment, such as indigestion, anaemia, heavy colds (in winter), 
gastric disorders in summer. When one considers that overtime here 
means simply employment up to the normal legal period, that is, ten and 
ten and a half hours a day, and does not mean overtime as permitted in a 
large number of industries (in the case of women over eighteen) and which 
extends to twelve hours in the day, the result is all the more striking, and 
one feels that a similar record in one of the industries in which overtime is 
allowed would produce more noticeable statistics of the results of over- 
fatigue. The conclusion seems to us clear that eight and a half to nine 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME*. DANGER TO HEALTH 415 

hours' work a day cannot be exceeded by women and girls without over- great 
strain and fatigue resulting in a lower standard of health. (Pages 253- ^^"^^^^ 
254.) 

Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Employ- CANADA 
ment. The Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., and Operators 
at Toronto, Out. The Department of Labour. Ottawa, Canada, 1907. 

Mr. Dunstan: 

To the girl working a good deal of overtime it (the wage) was all right 
but the overtime was most objectionable from the standpoint of her 
health. (Pages 29-30.) 

Documents Parlementaires. Chamhre des Deputes, 10^ Juin, 1890. An- FRANCE 
nexe 649. [Parliamentary Documents of the French Chamber of 
Deputies, June 10, 1890. Annex 649.] Rapport sur le travail des 
enfants, des filles mineures et des femmes dans les etablissements in- 
dustriels. [Report on the Labor of Children, Young Girls and Women 
in Industrial Establishments.] Senator Richard Waddington. 

In sewing rooms, florists, dressmaking establishments, etc., the evening 
hours are continually added on to the working day; the working girls are 
quite unable to foresee the occasions when late overtime will be required 
of them, and they dare not refuse to stay for fear of immediate dismissal. 
It is not necessary to insist upon the grave injury to health suffered by 
women whose working day is thus prolonged to fifteen, sixteen, even 
eighteen hours; it is self-evident, not to speak of the disorganization of 
family life which results from this compulsory employment of the daughter, 
the wife, or the mother. (Page 1087.) 

Documents Parlementaires. Senat, 22^ Juin, 1891. Annexe 138. [Par- 
liamentary Documents of the French Senate, June 22, 1891. Annex 
138.] Rapport fait sur le travail des enfants, des filles mineures, et des 
femmes dans les etablissements industriels. [Report on the Labour of 
Children, Young Girls, and Women in Industrial Establishments.] 

M. TOLAIN. 

As to the evening overtime its special characteristic is, as the inspector 
of the department of the Seine pointed out, that it is imposed upon women 
who have already been working all day. It differs, therefore, from regular 
night work, in that it is carried on by workers who have already performed 



4i6 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE a day's full task, and not by a fresh set who have been able to arrange 

systematically for their regular night hours by taking at least some rest 
by day and by making arrangements for their expected night of work. 
It is, therefore, upon women already fatigued that this extra burden is 
laid by the prolongation of the day's labor and this overtime may be in all, 
sixteen and seventeen hours' continuous labor — sometimes even more. 
(Page 205.) 



BELGIUM Royaume de Belgique. Rapport presents a M. le Ministre de V Industrie 
et du Travail. [Report to the Belgian Minister of Commerce and Labor.] 
Le Travail de Nuit des Ouvrieres de V Industrie dans les Pays Etr angers. 
[Night fVork of Women in Industry in Foreign Countries.] Maurice 
Ansiaux, Brussels, 1898. 

Evening work is not prohibited in Austria in small establishments. 
It will be of very great interest to inquire into the use made of this liberty. 
But it is disheartening to find that the development attained by author- 
ized evening work is very great. 

It is especially at Vienna that abuses are very numerous, and some- 
times very grave. 

Here, as elsewhere, it is a matter of additional or overtime work suc- 
ceeding and superimposed upon the normal activity of the working day 
and prolonged to a late hour of the night : to midnight, 1 or 2 o'clock, and 
even later in some cases. 

M. von Klein recognized that the lot of working women subject to this 
overwork is very unhappy. (Page 178.) 

According to an official inquiry made in March and April, 1896, "the 
abuse varied in gravity according to trades. It must be recognized that 
in the majority of cases (the 'inquiry extended to fifty-eight distinct 
trades') the evil was of wide extent. All the testimony given during the 
course of the inquiry had a monotonous and saddening similarity. Almost 
always, the evening work — during the season — continued until 1 or 2 
o'clock in the morning. The next day it was necessary to be at work at 
an early hour, under penalty of a serious deduction from wages." (Pages 
180-181.) 



GERMANY 



Le Travail de Nuit dans VIndustrie. Rapports sur son importance et sa 
reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. [Night Work 
of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and legal regulation. 
Preface hy Etienne Bauer.] Interdiction du Travail de Nuit des 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 4I7 

Femmes en Allemagne. [Prohibition of Night Work of Women in GERMANY 
Germany.] Dr. Max Hirsch. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Especially is the complaint made that the overtime and night work of 
women bring on abdominal troubles, jaundice, pulmonary affections 
developing into inflammation of the lungs, and weaknesses of the eyes; 
with reference to these latter effects it is stated that female workers in 
textile mills very soon have their sight affected. (Page 29.) 



Report of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor, Industries and Commerce. 1907- united 

im. "^*™' 

Repeatedly has there been brought to the attention of this office the 
common practice of women working overtime. 

At first it would seem that this was a question that was entirely op- 
tional with the worker, but as a matter of fact when the machines are 
ready for operation the employee who is not at her post must forfeit her 
position and make way for some one who will be willing to work as oc- 
casion requires. 

Physicians, nurses, anxious mothers and ailing girls have appealed, 
but until there is a law that positively forbids the employment of women 
more than a specified time such establishments as must run overtime to 
fill the "rush orders" will work at night. . . . The long period of standing 
on their feet, the shortened time for meals, all combine to militate strongly 
against, not only her own health, but the health of those who shall come 
after her. 

This particularly applies when we realize that the work that is done by 
women in so many departments of industry is "piece" work, where the 
nervous strain is at its highest tension. 

It is therefore urged that Minnesota follow the good example of her 
sister States and place a time limit upon the number of hours when a 
woman may be employed. (Pages 243-244.) 



(2) Evening Work in Addition to Day Work 

A second danger to the health of v^orking women from 
overtime is the excessive exertion needed to keep up even- 
ing work after and in addition to the fatigue of the day's 

work. 

27* 



4i8 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY Archiv fiir Unfallheilkunde, Gewerhehygiene und Gewerhekrankheiten. 
Bd. I. Cher den Gesundheitsschuti der Gewerblichen Arheiter. [Pro- 
tection of the IVorkingman' s Health.] Dr. Schaefer. Stuttgart, 
Enke, 1896. 

... In many cases ordinary working hours are extended by the 
system of overtime. 

The results are disturbances of nutrition, premature decrease of 
efficiency, increase in the numbers of accidents, lowering of organic re- 
sistance to sickness and dangers of occupation in general; last, but not 
least, arrested physical and mental development in the offspring of our 
working population. (Page 204.) 



Das Verhot der Nachtarheit. Bericht erstattet an dem internationalen 
Kongress fiir gesetilichen Arheiter schuti in Paris, 1900. (Schmoller's 
Jahrhuch, 25 '^.) [Prohibition of Night Work. Report presented to 
the International Congress for Labor Legislation at Paris, 1900. 
{Schmoller's Yearbook, 25 ^'^)] Dr. Max Hirsch, Germany. Leipzig, 
1901. 

When estimating the danger to health, however, not only night work 
itself must be considered, but the entire working time within the 24 hours 
and in one week. Even a short working time at night after a long day, 
or even after a normal working day, must be regarded as harmful. Here 
the generally recognized evil of overtime complicates the question of 
night work. Prof. Dr. Erismann of Zurich rightly stigmatizes this re- 
curring "overtime" lasting into the hours of the night as a cruel exploita- 
tion of the worker and as a lamentable evasion of factory laws. (Pages 
1263-1264.) 



AUSTRIA 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit 
des Femmes dans V Industrie en Autriche. [Night Work of Women in 
Industry in Austria.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

What we have just said (regarding evils of night work) is equally ap- 
plicable to establishments less important than factories, with this added 
circumstance, that the fatigue arising from the day's work is increased by 
late overtime, making the task still more arduous. 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 419 

Here, after a day's work already too long, when, after 12 or 14 hours of Austria 
toil, "night work" must be accomplished in addition, the body becomes 
incapable of enduring the more intensive demands which are unremittingly 
made upon it. This overtime is the most destructive form of night work, 
and it is found in all those establishments that are not classed as factories. 
(Page 82.) 

Report of Ohio Inspector of JVorkshops and Factories. 1890. united 

^ •' r J r STATES 

... If there can be raised any objection to the employment of women 
in factories, etc., it certainly should be their employment for unreasonable 
hours, and especially after night. The employment of women in factories 
implies that the great majority are compelled to remain standing more or 
less of the time while engaged at their daily avocation. It is a well es- 
tablished fact that for a woman to remain standing for any length of 
time, and especially for such practice to extend from day to day, will 
eventually result to her physical detriment. So apparent has this fact 
been established that Ohio has already placed a law on her statute books 
compelling that all employers of women furnish comfortable seats for 
their use, but it is absolutely impossible for most factory employees to 
receive much relief from this law, being, through necessity caused from 
the nature of their work, compelled to remain standing a greater portion 
of the time; and when they have been so employed for a period of ten 
hours, is it not barbarous that they should be compelled to work still 
longer hours, and sometimes far into the night? This department has 
received many pathetic appeals for relief from women employed in fac- 
tories, who, through fear of being discharged from their positions, have 
been compelled to work long and irregular hours. (Pages 37-38.) 



(3) Injury from Gas and Bad Air 

The air of workrooms in which evening work is carried 
on is usually bad, vitiated by the presence of workers during 
the whole day, and by gas required at night. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1831-32. Report from the Select great 
Committee on the "Bill to Regulate the Labour of Children in the Mills ^^"^^^ 
and Factories of the United Kingdom." 

Sir George Leman Tuthill, F.R.S., physician to the Westminster Hos- 
pital and Bethlem Hospital: 



420 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT 11314. You have already given your opinion as to the labour pursued 

during the night being probably more prejudicial than that undergone in 
the daytime; do you conceive that the having to work by artificial lights 
during the night may also tend to render labour more insalubrious, and 
also prejudicial to the eyes, as the operatives now being to allege? — Work- 
ing during the night involves the necessity of using artificial light; and 
artificial light contributes to render unfit for respiration the air of the 
factory in which the light is used. Where artificial light is used to any 
extent, there must be a considerable quantity of carbonic gas mixing 
with the air of the apartment, which is prejudicial to health. (Page 580.) 

Joseph Henry Green, Esq., F.R.S., a surgeon of St. Thomas' Hospital 
and Professor of Surgery at King's College: 

11392. What effect has the long continued burning of artificial lights 
upon the purity of the atmosphere? — It removes the oxygen, and renders 
it chemically unfit for respiration. (Page 588.) 

Charles Aston Key, Esq., surgeon at Guy's Hospital: 

11416. Would not the artificial lights by which the labour must be 
pursued have a prejudicial influence upon the health by destroying to a 
certain degree the salubrity of the atmosphere? — Undoubtedly they must 
tend to deteriorate the quantity of the air, and render it unfit for the pur- 
poses of respiration. 

11417. Some of the operatives have alleged that the gas lights have a 
tendency to injure the sight when they have to labour by them for so long 
a period; do you consider that that might be a result produced by labour 
under those circumstances? — Yes; 1 conceive that that is a very natural 
consequence. (Page 591.) 

James Guthrie, Esq., F. R. S., Vice-President of Royal College of 
Surgeons, surgeon to Westminster Hospital and to Westminster Eye 
Hospital: 

11479. In addition to other effects it might be likely to produce, does 
not this labour, when pursued by night, and consequently by gas or other 
artificial lights, tend, as the operatives allege it does, to injure sight? — 
Yes. (Page 595.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Reports from Select Com- 
mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. 

Witness, A. Redgrave, Chief Inspector of Factories: 
24. Is it not the case that, although many of the shops are very well 
ventilated, and there is no objection upon that score, there are a large 
number of shops in which the atmosphere is no better than that in a 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 42 1 

factory? ... At night, unquestionably in large drapers' shops, with a great 
very large quantity of gas burning, the air is vitiated and bad. (Page 3.) ^^^^^ 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVIII. 1889. Report of Inspectors of 
Factories. 

It must always be borne in mind that it is not only the length of the 
hours worked which is productive of so much harm, but the fact that 
especially in the winter time so large a proportion of these hours is passed 
in an atmosphere vitiated by gas and other impurities which have con- 
tinued to accumulate during the day, which atmosphere the workers in- 
hale at a time when the body is fatigued by a full day's work. (Page 96.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1893. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

. . . Our experience as factory inspectors goes more to the question of 
physical evil, and I have seen many a girl toiling away in a workroom, 
where the gas has been burning for 5 hours, upon whose face it did not 
want the eye of a doctor to discover the traces of the irremediable mischief 
which was going on. (Page 92.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from the' Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

Witness, Secretary Scottish Shopkeepers' Association: 
1034. . . . Then Dr. Cowan Lees is not an officer of our Union, but 
his practice is in a large and populous shopkeeping district of Glasgow, 
and knowing that he was peculiarly situated as regards experience we 
wrote to him, and this is his reply: "... I may state that I am of 
opinion that the long hours and confinement in the vitiated atmosphere 
of the great majority of shops, especially during the evening and night 
hours, are decidedly injurious to the health of shop assistants. During 
the long hours after dark shops are brilliantly lit . . . and it is in this that 
perhaps the greatest damage is done. If it were possible to lessen the 
evening hours, which 1 believe could be done without loss to the employers, 
a great blessing would be secured for the shop assistants." (Pages 75-76.) 

Report of the New York Department of Labor. 1911. S??SSP 

STATE) S 

In my previous reports, the question of artificial lighting in its rela- 
tion to air vitiation has been fully discussed. Its efi'ects upon the 



422 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



eyes of the workers, if too dim, or too glaring, are to cause eye strain, 
nervous disorders, dimness of vision and the loss of eyesight, which 
latter is the greatest calamity that can befall anyone. 

It has been impossible to undertake an intensive investigation into the 
subject, but as a result of general injuries among the workers, I find 
there are a number who suffer from the effects of faulty lighting. I 
have observed many workers employed with unshaded gas and electric 
light directly on a level with the eyes, and from my own experience 
with such means of lighting, I am fully convinced of the harmfulness of 
such illumination. (Page 73.) 



(4) Lack of Sleep 

The lack of sleep, due both to the inadequate resting 
time allowed between working days when evening work 
is required, and to the impossibility of getting sleep after 
an exhausting and excessively long working day, causes 
serious injury to the health of workingwomen. 



FRANCE Rapports presenfes a M. le Ministre de Commerce, de V Industrie, des Postes 

et des Telegraphes par les Inspedeurs du Travail. [Reports presented 
to the (French) Minister of Commerce, Labor, etc., etc., by the Factory 
Inspectors.] La Question de V Interdiction du Travail de Nuit. [The 
Question of Prohibiting Night Work.] Paris, 1900. 

Late hours of work, as well as actual night work, are destructive to the 
health of girls and women. We have had occasion more than once to ob- 
serve the injurious effect of evening overtime. When night hours are 
added to those of the day's labor the result is overwork which directly 
saps the strength and promotes the craving for alcoholic stimulant. 
During an inquiry made in Marseilles a number of sewing girls complamed 
that after a certain number of evenings with late overtime they found it 
impossible to sleep. Though overcome by fatigue, they lay awake until 
early morning, when it was nearly time to go to work again. In conse- 
quence, they did not have the seven hours of sleep imperatively necessary 
for an adult. Failing to have restful nights after the days' work, insomnia 
supervenes with all its terrors. Sleep has so vast an importance with 
regard to health that there is perhaps no function deserving of more serious 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 423 

consideration. Everything that interferes with the hygiene of sleep is FRANCE 
dangerous, because the equilibrium of the nervous system is imperilled. 
The overworked women who have been employed overtime in the evenings 
absolutely need the period of unemployment to re-establish their shattered 
health as best they may. (Pages 71-72.) 

La Revue de Paris. September-October, 1904. Le Travail de Niiit des 
Femmes. [Night Work of IVomen.] Georges Alfassa. 

Of what value can the sleep be that comes between 2 and 7 a. m. after 
an exhausting day and evening? Thus, aggravated by conditions more 
or less unhygienic, night work for women has always resulted in depriva- 
tion of sleep. (Page 369.) 

A physician, Dr. Rochard, says on this subject: "... Work at night 
is pernicious in itself, and has serious objections even when the workers 
can rest by day. The loss of sleep causes one of the most painful forms of 
suffering that human beings can be called upon to endure; it becomes more 
distressing when it is accompanied by monotonous labor and a repetition 
of the same motions over and over. It is above all fatal to the health of 
women." (Page 369.) 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- AUSTRIA 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit 
des Femmes dans V Industrie en Autriche. [Night Work of Women in 
Industry in Austria.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

. . . The injury to the eyes caused by white goods . . . and the bent 
position in sewing . . . require specially a sufficient night's sleep, for it 
is only this that can counterbalance the stooped posture and eye weari- 
ness of the day, and combat the anaemia resulting from under- 
nutrition. (Page 87.) 



(5) Irreparable Overstrain 

The excessive strain of "rush" work makes such great 
demands upon the worker's strength at certain seasons 
or days of the week, that no relief is afforded by the shorter 



424 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



hours succeeding, which are supposed to compensate for the 
strain. The health of workingwomen has been wrecked 
even by isolated instances of such excessive exertion. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1873. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for tie Half-year ending 30th April, 1873. 

To my mind it seems very fallacious reasoning to attempt to justify 
overtime amongst females ... on the ground that, taking the years 
through, the hours of work average less than sixty weekly. A girl is not 
a whit less likely to be injured physically and morally by working fourteen 
hours a day in May and June because she has not to work more than seven 
hours in September and October. (Page 43.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIV. 1898. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

Sixty hours' actual work in a normal week may be considered as a 
reasonable amount by the average laundry girl, but when one day in the 
week is a whole holiday, prescribed by the Factory Act, and she is still 
required to work sixty hours in the remaining five days, she apparently 
seems to feel that she is not being fairly dealt by, and that the law is taking 
away with one hand what it gave with the other. Several complaints 
have been received of sixty hours' employment in a laundry on the five 
consecutive days following a statutory holiday, as of something illegal, 
and a visit paid in response to one of these on a Saturday following a 
Monday Bank (holiday) found manageress, women, and girls tired out 
and murmuring that a holiday which had to be made up for as they had 
made it up was no holiday. (Page 107.) 



GERMANY AmtUche Mittheilungen aus den jahres-Berichten der Gewerhe-Aufsichts- 
heamten. XXI. 1896. [Official Information from Reports of the 
{German) Factory Inspectors.] Berlin, Bruer, 1897. 

The complaints of laundrywomen in Beuel of bad conditions and over- 
work gave the inspector in Bonn opportunity to investigate the laundries. 
He found deplorable conditions. . . . The hours of work were varied and 
often permitted grave abuses of the strength of employees. In some 
establishments . . . the hours of work were prolonged from midnight 
until 6 or even 8 of the following evening, or from 12 to 20 hours broken 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: DANGER TO HEALTH 425 

only by short and irregular pauses. Even if this only occurred two or GERMANY 
three times a week it could not fail to injure the strongest constitution. 
Unfortunately it is impossible at present to interfere, as this industry 
does not come under the factory laws. Cologne. (Page 264.) 



Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
September, 1907. Vol. II. Sec. IV. Die Ermiidung durch Berufsar- 
heit. [Fatigue resulting from Occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, 
Hirschwald, 1908. 

My experience and observations do not permit me to feel any uncer- 
tainty in believing that the injury to health inflicted upon even fully 
capable workers by the special demands of a periodically heightened rush 
of work is never compensated for. Under this head we must consider 
the demands of all seasonal work, and those industries where piece-work 
with overtime is the rule during several months in the year, as also the 
special rush seasons in shops, before Christmas, etc., etc. We observe 
toward the end of such periods a marked increase in the amount of sick- 
ness, and with a frequent repetition of forced drafts upon strength the 
injurious results can no longer be repaired by longer pauses, or reduction 
of hours, or diminished demands upon the working capacity. Similarly 
in laundries the overstrain of the last part of the week is so great that it 
cannot possibly be balanced by the relatively easier work of the first part. 
(Page 610.) 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- AUSTRIA 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night IVork of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit 
des Femmes dans V Industrie en Autriche. [Night Work of Women in 
Industry in Austria.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

. . . The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals but it 
is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of work injurious, 
but also that a single isolated instance of overstrain may be harmful to a 
woman all the rest of her life, — a fact that is of importance for workers in 
seasonal trades, and all the more so because the general ignorance of 
people as to hygiene for women gives no reason to anticipate any initia- 
tive for reform among the workers themselves. (Page 86.) 



426 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. Irene 
Osgood, Special Agent. 

During overtime work conditions are especially bad. A twelve-hour 
day with a light breakfast, a long walk, and a cold and insufficient lunch 
and supper, with intense work throughout the whole time, is not conducive 
to the physical well-being of a girl. Emergencies of this kind leave a 
permanent impress upon the health of women. (Page 1062.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



B. Allowance of Overtime Dangerous to Morals 

(1) Loss OF Family Life 

Overtime work for women inevitably demoralizes all 
family life. When working hours are so long that the 
evening is invaded by labor the exhausted worker who does 
not reach home until late in the evening must unavoidably 
neglect all family duties, and lose all the elevating influence 
of family life. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIV. 1866. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending 31st October, 1865. 

We may be told, indeed, that to repeal this lost-time clause, and to 
substitute for it a strict adherence to factory hours, would be injuriously 
to affect the bleachers' and dyers' interests. But let us consider, too, the 
workers' interests, their powers of endurance, their loss of social comfort, 
the intellectual degradation of their families; and let us remember that 
these are considerations of a higher order than mere overwork, and of more 
enduring consequences. (Page 82.) 



An Essay on the Nine Hours Movement. 
Truelove, 1861. 



John Bedford Lend. London, 



But overtoil means even more than this: it means disreputable homes. 
How can a man have that regard and that control over his household which 
it is desirable he should possess, if every hour of the daylight be spent in 
the workshop? His children grow up without his supervision, he has 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME! DANGER TO MORALS 427 

neither the desire nor the time to instruct them; and hence those deplor- great 

BRITAIN 

able results which we too often witness. 

... Or if we look at the question from an intellectual point of view. 
Do we not perceive that mental improvement is almost rendered an im- 
possibility, for those who have idleness thrust upon them have neither 
the desire nor the motive for so improving themselves, while those who 
are overworked are unfitted for the display of the mental activity required 
for intellectual improvement. (Page 10.) 

Problems of Poverty. John A. Hobson, M.A. London, Methuen, 1891. 

One of the chief social dangers of the age is the effect of industrial 
work upon the motherhood of the race. So long as we refuse to insist as 
a nation, that along with the growth of national wealth there shall be 
secured those conditions of healthy home life requisite for the sound, 
physical, moral, and intellectual growth of the young, at whatever cost of 
interference with so-called private liberty of action, we are rendering our- 
selves as a nation deliberately responsible for the continuance of that 
creature whose appearance gives a loud lie to our claim of civilization, — 
the gutter child of our city streets. (Page 169.) 

The Economic Journal. Vol. XIV. 1904. The Employment of Women 
in Paper Mills. B. L. Hutchins. 

With regard to home life, the only employer seen who was of an age 
to remember conditions before the Act stated emphatically that legal 
regulation had been of greatest benefit to women workers. The old 
state of things in which women worked irregular hours, and in some cases 
all through the night, in relays, as men did, was demoralizing, and, as 
scarcely needs proving, fatal to any orderly home life. (Page 247.) 

Report of the New Zealand Bureau of Industries. 1896. ZEALAND 

One very great drawback upon overtime labour, especially for girls, 
is that they have to work at night, and this is for many reasons undesir- 
able. Parents complain that proper supervision of their children's con- 
duct is impossible, and there is little doubt that night work of any kind 
for women is open to grave objection. (Page iii.) 

Rapports presentes a M. le Ministre de Commerce, de V Industrie, des Postes FRANCE 
et des Telegraphes, par les Inspecteurs du Travail. [Reports presented 
to the {French) Minister of Commerce, Labor, etc., etc. by the Factory 



428 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

FRANCE Inspectors.] La Question de V Interdiction du Travail de Nuit. [The 

Question of Prohibiting Night Work.] Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, 1900. 

From the point of view of wholesome organization of family life the 
evening overtime endangers or destroys the morals of young girls so that 
this overtime is almost worse than regular night work . . . she must 
practically renounce her family. (Pages 84-85.) 

L' Interdiction du Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie Fran^aise. 
[The Prohibition of Night Work for Women in French Industry.] 
A. Chazal. Paris, Pedone, 1902. 

A labor inspector deplores the physical and moral effects of overtime 
evening work: "The amount of work required during 12 hours is indeed 
for girls and women an effort which they can frequently renew only at the 
price of their health. . . . From the point of view of the family, overtime 
work in the evening is detrimental; first, for young girls who escape thus 
the oversight of parents and who are exposed to the dangers of the street; 
secondly, to women and to mothers whose presence at home is so necessary. 

"Overtime work at the mill does not permit them to care for their 
husbands, whose work almost always ends by 7 p. m., nor for their chil- 
dren, who are left to themselves and do not have even the indispensable 
material care, consequently their intellectual and moral needs are entirely 
neglected. The result of evening overtime work on the woman without 
regard to age is physical decline, even when it does not bring moral de- 
cline." (Pages 99-100.) 

La Revue de Paris. September-October, 1904. Le Travail de Nuit des 
Femmes. [Night Work for Women.] Georges Alfassa. 

Late evening work is as dangerous as night work for the younger women. 
Late hours in the shop remove the girl from the protection of her parents. 
(Page 372.) 



GERMANY Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Interdiction du Tra- 
vail de Nuit des Femmes en Allemagne. [Prohibition of Night Work of 
Women in Germany.] Dr. Max Hirsch. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

But if . . . the family cannot be united in the evening, then the full 
measure of evil is suffered; then as a rule everything within the family 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME! DANGER TO MORALS 429 

is set adrift. It may be objected that overtime work can be authorized Germany 

for only forty days. When during forty evenings, or even less, during 

the year, the woman, prolonging her absence beyond the usual working 

day, must slight her home duties, fail to insure the comfort of her husband 

and the physical and moral well-being of her children, such a practice 

well may, it even necessarily must, cause an irreparable injury, even to 

sapping and destroying the family life. (Page 34.) 

Proceedings of the First International Convention on Industrial Diseases. ITALY 
Milan, 1906. Frenastenia e delinquen^a in rapporto a taluni ordina- 
menti del lavoro. [Imbecility and Criminality in Relation to Certain 
Forms of Labor.] Prof. Crisafulll 

When both parents, because of their need to work, pass the entire day 
away from home, the children, with few exceptions, grow up in a state of 
moral abandonment, and it is very rare that, in their moments of leisure, 
the parents can dedicate themselves to their education, owing to the fact 
that the heavy incessant toil in factory or workroom reduces them to a 
state of physical and mental exhaustion. (Page 147.) 

Evidence submitted to the Massachusetts Legislature in Favor of the Enact- united 
ment of a Ten-hour Law. Lawrence. 1870. STATES 

Comparative merits ... of the ten-hour system over the present 
(i. e., 11 hours). 

2d. Heads of families are less crowded in the discharge of family 
duties— hence less irritated and passionate in directing the affairs of their 
households. The passionate treatment of wearied children by overworked 
parents, it is to be feared, has much to do m rendering home influences 
in some cases a curse instead of a blessing, yea, in driving both parents and 
children into habits of dissipation. E. A. Buck. (Pages 19-20.) 

Congressional Record. Vol. XXI. Part X. Pages 9300-9301. August 
28, 1890. Remarks of Mr. McKinley upon the Eight-hour Bill. 

The tendency of the times the world over is for shorter hours for labor; 
shorter^ hours in the interest of health, shorter hours in the interest of 
humanity, shorter hours in the interest of the home and the family. 
. . . Cardinal Manning in a recent article spoke noble words on the gen- 
eral subject when he said: 

"But if the domestic life of the people be vital above all; if the peace, 



430 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



the purity of homes, the education of children, the duties of wives and 
mothers, the duties of husbands and of fathers, be written in the natural 
law of mankind, and if these things are sacred far beyond anything that 
can be sold in the market, then I say if the hours of labor resulting from 
the unregulated sale of a man's strength and skill shall lead to the de- 
struction of domestic life, to the neglect of children, to turning wives and 
mothers into living machines, and of fathers and husbands into, what 
shall I say, creatures of burden? I will not say any other word — who rise 
up before the sun, and come back when it is set, wearied and able only to 
take food, and lie down and rest, the domestic life of man exists no longer 
and we dare not go on in this path." (Pages 8-9.) 



(2) Danger of the Streets at Night 

Overtime work subjects working women to the dangers 
of the streets at night. When work is continued until 
late night hours, the return home is fraught with physical 
and moral peril. 

FRANCE Documents Parlementaires. Chamhre des Deputes, 10^ Juin, 1890. 

Annexe 649. [Parliamentary Documents of the {French) Chamber of 
Deputies, June 10, 1890. Annex 649.] Rapport fait sur le travail des 
enfants, des filles mineures et des femmes dans les etablissements in- 
dustriels. [Report on the Labor of Children, Young Girls, and Women 
in Industrial Establishments.] Senator Richard Waddington. 

In dressmaking establishments, etc. the work is often prolonged to a 
late hour; sometimes it lasts all night. The women, dismissed at mid- 
night or later, are exposed to inconveniences, often to danger, in regaining 
their often distant homes. (Page 1087.) 



Rapports presentes a M. le Ministre du Commerce de V Industrie, des Postes 
et des Telegraphes par les Inspecteurs du Travail dans VIndustrie. 
[Reports of the {French) Factory Inspectors to the Minister of Labor, 
etc.] La Question de V Interdiction du Travail de Nuit. [The Question 
of the Prohibition of Nightwork.] M. Despeaux, Inspector. Paris, 
1900. 

For young girls, nightwork means the destruction of family influence, 
the promiscuity of the workplace, the deserted street, and at last prostitu- 
tion. (Page 11.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME! DANGER TO MORALS 43 1 

L'Ouvriere an XX^ Steele. Questions Pratiques de Legislation Ouvriere. FRANCE 
Vol. III. [Practical Questions of Labor Legislation.] J. Benzacar. 
Paris, 1902. 

Work at night should be completely prohibited; not only does it ex- 
haust women, but it exposes them, upon leaving the place of employment, 
to encounters that are dangerous both to safety and to morality. (Page 
174.) 

La Revue de Paris. Sept.-Oct., 1904. Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes. 
[Night Work for Women.] Georges Alfassa. 

In going home late at night they (workingwomen) are often insulted, 
and told that no decent woman is abroad at such an hour. On reaching 
their homes, they go to bed without food, and the next day their work 
recommences at the usual hour. Only the most considerate employers 
give them some moments of grace in the morning. (Page 369.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1893. Royal Commission on great 

BRITAIN 

Labour. Group C. Appendix CXXIX. Summary of Evidence of 
Mr. C. B. Bowling {Her Majesty's Inspector of Factories). 

I have discussed this matter (overtime) with numbers of all classes 
concerned. . . . They admit the evils, and these can be spoken to by all 
my colleagues, and I think in all large towns by the police, who have seen 
some of the results of turning a number of girls out into the streets at 
times of the night when there are comparatively few respectable people 
about. (Page 725.) 

Journalof the Royal Statistical Society. Vol. LV. 1892. Female Labour ^^^'^^^UA. 
in New South Wales. Abstract of ''New South Wales: Census and 
Industrial Returns Act of 1891." London, Stamford, 1892. 

Millinery is a much more attractive trade; the work is lighter, and the 
hours of labour (usually 9 a. m. to 6 p. m., and 1 p. m. on Saturdays) 
appear to be strictly observed. This last point is a serious consideration 
with parents, who prefer to apprentice their girls to this trade, knowing 
they will not be compelled to return home alone at almost any time of 
night. (Page 490.) 

Report of the New Zealand Department of Labour. 1897. ??X a wt» 

That girls and women should be compelled by overtime work to return 
to their homes late at night is most undesirable, not only from the tempta- 



432 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



NEW- 
ZEALAND 



tions and annoyances to which they are thereby subjected, but also for 
the home itself left too long neglected or unvisited. (Page iii.) 



CANADA Toronto University Studies in Political Science. First Series. No. 3. 

The Conditions of Female Labour. Jean Thompson Scott, Toronto, 
1892. 

Another objection to the custom of long hours is that girls have often 
to find their way home alone at late hours, along lonely streets. (Page 
15.) 

GERMANY Di^ J ahresherichte der k. Bayerischen Fabriken- und Gewerbe- Inspector en 
fur das Jahr 1901. [Report of the Royal Bavarian Factory Inspectors 
for 1901.] Munich, Ackermann, 1902. 

The overlong evening working hours, resulting from the exceptions 
permitted by the law as overtime react harmfully upon the health of the 
women. Beside that, young women, returning late at night to their 
homes are exposed to insult and danger. (Page 8.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of New York State Factory Inspectors. 1887. 

It is not in accord with the fitness of things that females should be 
required to labor through the long hours of the night, or to such a late 
hour that they will be likely to suffer insult or bodily harm while returning 
to their homes. (Page 28.) 



Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. 

... 10 o'clock at night is too late an hour to keep female workers 
away from home. In the cities, it means that such workers will get 
home not earlier than 10:30 to 11, because a majority of them live far 
from the business centre. Temptation to "suspend the rules" is always 
offered in cities to tired and discouraged workers, men and women, and 
the latter must also face the wiles and insults of loafers and mashers when 
out alone late at night. Attacks on young girls returning from work 
late at night are not infrequent; and since this is so, the state ought to 
protect them to the limit of its unquestioned power. (Page 33.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME! INJURY TO OUTPUT 433 

C. Allowance of Overtime Injurious to Output 

(1) Evening Work Results in Inferior Output 

The system of working overtime is not only disastrous 
to health, but economically indefensible. After a very 
short period of evening work, output declines in amount 
and quality, while the efificiency of the workers is perma- 
nently injured by the overexertion required. 

The most enlightened employers therefore have found 
that overtime does not pay; that it entails higher expenses 
than regular work, and results in progressively inferior out- 
put. 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XX. 1878. Reports of Inspectors of g^^jj 
Factories. 

The same person informed me that she at times doubted the value of 
working even the overtime allowed under the Act. The women at the 
close of the 12 hours, which period constitutes the usual day's work, were 
tired and exhausted and hardly did enough after that to pay for the gas 
consumed. (Page 14.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

The arguments against overtime seem to me to be: 
1. That the work done during overtime is not equal, in amount or 
quality, to that done in regular hours. (Page 17.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories. 

I hope and believe that employers are at least beginning to recognize 
that employment of their hands overtime is a short-sighted policy and 
really bad economy. Some, I know, think so. There is also a waning 
inclination, I believe, on the part of the em.ployed to grasp at the chance 
of making extra wages by overtime. If so, it is, I think, a healthv sign 
28* 



434 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT on both sides; health and full efficiency while at work being better than 

BRITAIN • • 

extra wages and long hours, better also in its results to the employer. 
(Page 158.) 



The Eight Hours Day. Report on a Year's Work with a Forty-eight Hours 
IVeek in the Salford Iron Works, Manchester. {Mather and Piatt, 
Ltd.) William Mather, M.P. Manchester, Guardian Printing 
Works, 1894. 

I attribute the full maintenance of our production through the trial 
year solely to the unimpaired and cheerful energy on the part of every 
man and boy throughout the day. . . . 

The total abolition of overtime, excepting in the rarest cases, is es- 
sential to the success of the shorter hours, if my conclusions as to the cause 
of increased production be correct. 

This custom is a delusion on the part of workpeople and employers 
alike. 

The extra wages are obtained by the men at too great a cost. The 
extra work is not worth to the employers the price they pay for it. 

The double-shift system, which the Trade Unions have readily ap- 
proved, has, on the other hand, many advantages in cases of exceptional 
pressure. 

Employment is afforded thereby to more men, and the work they do 
is not paid for at an abnormal rate. . . . 

But of this I am assured, that the most economical production is ob- 
tained by employing men only so long as they are at their best. When 
this stage is passed, there is no true economy in their continued work. 
(Pages 25-26.) 



The Women's Industrial News. London, March, 1902. Women Polishers. 
{An enquiry made by the Technical Training Committee.) Grace 
Oakshott. 

The much discussed question of the effect of legislation on women's 
position is of too much importance and interest ever to be neglected in an 
enquiry. Overtime in polishing plays such a small part in any case, 
women are scarcely affected by the law, but employers in discussing the 
desirability of protection are unanimous in their opinion that overtime is 
bad economy and that night work on moral, humane, and expedient 
grounds is to be condemned. (Page 292.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: INJURY TO OUTPUT 435 

Report of the 72nd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of great 
Science. 1902. London, Murray, 1903. Women's Labor: Second 
Report of the Committee . . . appointed to investigate the Economic 
Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labor. 

. . . The Factory Acts, after being bitterly opposed by the manu- 
facturers, taught them a valuable practical lesson of the bad economy of 
excessive work. Mr. Baker has recorded a case of a Birmingham firm 
of button-makers who in 1866 became so dissatisfied with the conditions 
and mode of life of their workpeople that they voluntarily applied the 
provisions of the Factory Act for textiles (1844) to their own factory and 
found its advantage. . . . The tendency is evidently in the direction of a 
still further shortening of hours in some quarters. "There may be a 
limit to which hours can be profitably reduced, but we haven't found it 
yet" was one remark. . . . The development of industrial efficiency in 
women may itself be due to the regulations of the Acts. If the conditions 
of women's work have been humanized, and the strain of it diminished, 
industry itself may have been made more attractive, and drawn a larger 
number of recruits from good homes and healthy families than would 
otherwise have been the case. (Pages 296-297.) 



Report of the 73rd Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of 
Science. 1903. London, Murray, 1904. Women's Labor: Third 
Report of the Committee . . . appointed to investigate the Economic 
Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labor. 

. . . There is a general consensus of opinion that overtime is wasteful 
and expensive, entailing higher wages and fixed expenses for inferior work, 
and hence its diminution tends to efficiency. Very few, indeed, seriously 
desire to increase the length of the week's work, and many by their action 
have shown that it is best kept below the legal maximum. (Page 
339.) 



Women's Work and Wages. Edward Cadbury, M. Cecile Matheson, 
and George Shann. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1906. 

It is a matter of general experience that long hours deteriorate the 
quality of the work, and where power machines are used, the power 
is too valuable to be provided for slack or tired workers. (Page 
91.) 



436 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



CANADA Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Employ- 

ment, between the Bell Telephone Company of Canada, Ltd., and Opera- 
tors at Toronto, Ont. The Department of Labour, Ottawa, Canada, 1907. 

To pay the present high rate per hour for much overtime is most un- 
economical, and results are not secured if there is any foundation for the 
idea that the service suflFers when operators become tired. Service may 
not be materially depreciated at the end of the day when operators have 
been working under ordinary pressure, but it certainly must suffer when 
operators work overtime after being subjected to a heavy strain for the 
preceding 5 hours. (Signed) K. J. Dunstan. (Page 13.) 

GERMANY Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten im Konigreich IViirttemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1900. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemberg for 1900.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1901. 

As regards overtime many employers agree that the output of the 
women is only large for the first few days of overtime and that after that 
it falls back again, so that one sees plainly the ill effects of overstrain. 
(Page 135.) 

Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten und Bergbehorden fiir das 
Jahr 1904. Bd. /. Preussen. [Reports of the (German) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1904. Vol. I. Prussia.] Berlin, Decker, 1905. 

The majority of employers are becoming more and more convinced 
that, when overtime is worked regularly, the output does not increase in 
proportion to the lengthened hours of work and additional wages. On 
the contrary, it tends to decrease gradually so that finally overtime be- 
comes too expensive to be worth while. (Page I^^^.) 

Jahresberichte der Gewerbe-Aufsichtsbeamten im Konigreich IViirttemberg 
fiir das Jahr 1905. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemberg, 1905.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1906. 

Employers agree that overtime work is, essentially, irrational, because 
as a rule wages for overtime are higher, while the productivity of the 
worker retrogrades with longer hours. (Page 53.) 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night JVork of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: INJURY TO OUTPUT 437 

legal regulation. Preface hy EriEii'NEB aver.] Interdiction du Travail GERMANY 
de Nuit des Femmes en Allemagne. [Prohibition of Night Work for 
Women in Industry in Germany.] Dr. Max Hirsch. Jena, Fischer, 
1903. 

The report for the district of Cologne says, "No appreciable economic 
damage would result from the absolute prohibition of overtime work, for 
it is not the custom, at least here, to pay female workers higher wages 
for overtime than for regular work; and furthermore, it is recognized that 
the working capacity of female laborers falls to a very low level, after a 
labor period of eleven hours." These facts agree with the fact very fre- 
quently, and many a time officially established, that among men also the 
reduction of time by one or even two hours does not lessen the output. 
Where therefore is the advantage of overtime work, especially of that 
imposed on women, even if we consider only the interests of the employer? 
(Page 40.) 



Gesammelte Ahhandlungen. Bd. III. [Complete Works. Vol. III.] 
Die Volkswirthschaftliche Bedeutung der Verkilriung des Industriellen 
Arheitstages. [The Economic Significance of a Shorter Working Day.] 
Ernst Abbe. Paper read at the meeting of the Political Society at 
Jena in 1901. Jena, Fischer, 1906. 

The more clearsighted of our overseers had often said that, when there 
was great pressure of work and overtime was necessary — perhaps rising 
from 9 to 10 hours daily, the results were only satisfactory for a short 
time — perhaps 14 days, not longer. After that a corresponding rate of 
output was not obtainable even though there was a 25 per cent increase 
in the rate of wages. The men got listless and surly and things did not 
go well. 

I had doubted this, and made an experiment to test it. . . . The men 
were anxious to please me, and had promised to work overtime . . . 
being glad of the extra income before Christmas. . . . After one week 
the extra output began to fall, and by the third and fourth week it had 
practically fallen to nothing. 

It is therefore impossible, even with good will and self-stimulation 
to increase output over and above the regular day's work, except for a 
short time. 

1 am glad to see that this is corroborated by the factory inspector of 
Brandenburg in 1900. In his report we fmd the testimony of a factory 
owner, who had found that it was only worth while to work overtime when 



438 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY work pressed, for about 14 days. After that the working capacity flagged. 
Fourteen days was our limit also, as we found. 

From all this I estimate the importance of good will and initiative as 
follows: Workmen are incapable of maintaining increased productivity 
during a lengthened working day, beyond a certain short time; and like- 
wise, the individual's ill will alone does not cause a lessened output under 
shorter hours. (Page 220.) 

The English examples of work under trades unionism have shown that 
even when the men felt an interest in doing less work in a given time, from 
the viewpoint of making more work for the unemployed, their efficiency 
and output under reduced hours were nevertheless the same. I therefore 
regard it as settled, that no motive is necessary, no will power, no driving 
of self interest is needed, to bring about this adjustment of rapidity of 
work to the shortened working hours, but that it is automatic and would 
occur even if the workers were discontented. (Page 221.) 

Fourteenth International Congress of Hygiene and Demography. Berlin, 
1907. Vol. II, Sec. IV. Ermiidung durch Berufsarbeit. [Fatigue 
resulting from occupation.] Dr. Emil Roth. Berlin, Hirschwald, 
1908. 

It must be remembered that the output of overtime, when the latter is 
of frequent occurrence, is always, according to my observations, from 25 
per cent to 50 per cent below the average. (Page 610.) 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



Berichte der eidg. Fabrik- und Bergwerkinspektoren iiber ihre Amtstdtig- 
keit in den Jahren 1898-1899. [Reports of the (Swiss) Factory and 
Mine Inspectors for 1898-1899.] Aaraii, Sauerldnder, 1900. 

The upholders of a shorter maximum working day all energetically 
oppose the frequent and widespread legal exemptions for overtime, and 
in this campaign they are often supported by employers who have come 
to regard overtime as unprofitable and who therefore do not use it. (Page 
57.) 

It is impossible for women and girls to maintain uniform production 
throughout all their work when they are kept busy 13 hours daily for any 
considerable period of time. Hence from the standpoint of output alone 
overtime could be done away with. But health considerations condemn 
overtime even more strongly, and these reasons have prevailed in some of 
the cantons in discouraging the practice of permitting exemptions. (Page 
59.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: INJURY TO OUTPUT 439 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie: Rapports sur son impor- FRANCE 
tance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night fVork of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

At present indeed, overtime work, at night or otherwise, serves partly 
to fill orders that have become more abundant but serves also quite as 
much to fulfill the lively desire on the part of promoters to reduce net cost 
by large output. But yet the rapid decline of price renders illusory, in 
many cases, the gain which the manufacturer derives from the night work 
of women. (Page xxxi.) 

Debats et Documents Parlementaires. Chamhre des Deputes, 23^ Mars, 
1881. [Parliamentary Debates and Documents {French) Chamber of 
Deputies, March 23, 1881.] Suite de la discussion des propositions de 
hi concernant la dur'ee des heures de travail dans les usines et les manu- 
factures. [Discussion of the Sections of the Law relating to the Length 
of Hours of Work in Work Shops and Factories.] 

Senator Waddington: 

The workman who works fewer hours in the day will produce more 
per hour, yet, even so, he will, of course, in a considerably shorter day not 
produce as much as under a 12-hour day. 

Nevertheless this loss has compensations. In many manufactures, 
slack seasons or no work at all, at times, is the rule, and a shop or factory 
which at some season works 12, 13 or 14 hours, at other times of the year 
has only 7, 8 or 9 hours' work. 

It seems to me that the restriction proposed would have the effect of 
equalizing the hours of labor. There is nothing worse for the worker 
than to be obliged, at times, to work under abnormal pressure and put 
forth exhausting efforts to keep up with overwork, and then, two or three 
months after, to be subjected to a relative loss of work. . . . We can 
perfectly well arrive at a juster and better division of labor, better for 
every one, and that without any of those dangers to production which 
our opponents fear . . . the same predictions of ruin have been made 
when the labor of children has been restricted, but they have not come 
true. (Page 613.) 

Rapports sur V Application pendant VAnnee 1899 des Lois (1892-1893) 
reglementant le Travail; par les Inspecteurs Divisionnaires du Travail. 
[Reports on the Working of the (French) Factory Laws of 1892 and 



FRANCE 



UNITED 
STATES 



440 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

1893, in the year 1899. By the French Factory Inspectors.] Paris, 
1900. 

I insist upon it that those employers who overwork their employees 
do not understand their own best interests. Can good work really be 
done by a young girl, who in case of rush, works fifteen hours a day? 
The best dressmakers understand this. (Page 64.) 

Women and the Trades. Elizabeth Beardsley Butler. The Pitts- 
hurgh Survey. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, 
Charities Publication Committee, 1909. 

Manufacturers complain that overtime is a loss to them. They say that 
their employees do poorer work at night, and that the cost in wasted ma- 
terial, in light and heating, is more than the profit gained by a lengthened 
day; but that they are forced to work overtime by customers who will 
not send in orders ahead. Night work, they say, is a means of holding 
their trade rather than increasing their profits. Perhaps a universal 
legal prohibition would prove effective in overcoming the dilatoriness of 
customers in these seasonal trades, as well as in the trades where work 
pressure is irregular. Unquestionably, much overtime has been eliminated 
in states that have stringent laws; much has been voluntarily avoided 
by manufacturers who have come to realize that night hours are in the 
long run a financial loss. (Pages 353-354.) 



(2) Output Impaired on Day Succeeding Evening Work 

Not only does evening work result in inferior output, 
but it injures the output of the next day as well. After 
evening work, the workers are apt to come late the follow- 
ing day. They are often obliged to do over again in the 
morning what was done the night before, and their effi- 
ciency is so much impaired by overexertion that the days 
following evening work show a steadily inferior output. 



great 

BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXIX-XXX. 
JVorkshops Acts Commission. 



1876. Factories and 



Witness, A Manufacturer. Vol. XXX. 

10,947. ... I think there is very little advantage in overtime, people 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME! INJURY TO OUTPUT 44 1 

are worn out at night and do not work with the same vigour in the morn- great 
ing. (Page 535.) ^^^^^ 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XXIII. 1877. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories. 

. . . There was a brisk demand for bricks, that they wanted to in- 
crease their production, and determined to work half an hour overtime 3 
nights a week. After trying it some little time they found the number of 
bricks turned off decreased, that on mornings succeeding the days on 
which they worked half an hour after the usual time for ceasing work the 
men invariably came late, and worked less time and less assiduously than 
when they worked regularly, that they returned to regular hours. (Page 
15.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

Some employers, too, hold the opinion that in proportion as the work- 
people suffer in health their work suffers in execution, and that in addition 
to this consideration has to be reckoned that of an extra expenditure in 
gas, which considerably weakens an already doubtful advantage. (Page 

11.) 

It is not likely that work done during these . . . hours of overtime, 
or on days following overtime, will equal either in quantity or quality that 
done when regular hours only are worked. (Page 15.) 

In connection with overtime I think that very often the occupiers and 
managers of works object to it while they take advantage of the privilege. 
They naturally recognize that after a spurt comes reaction and that late 
hours tell against good work the next day. (Page 301.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1902. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories. 

I think employers are beginning to look askance at overtime because 
it has to be paid for and sometimes at enhanced rates, resulting often in 
poorer work and less output the following days, and damage to the power 
of the workpeople. (Page 34.) 



442 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Association for the Advancement of Science. 73rd Meeting. 1903. 

Women's Labor: Third Report of the Committee . . . appointed to in- 
vestigate the Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's Labor. 
London, Murray, 1904. 

Very many employers say that overtime on one evening has the effect 
of tiring the women so as to spoil their next day's work; and there are 
many instances where a shortened or more regular week has resulted in a 
better output per worker. (Page 339.) 

Women in the Printing Trades. A Sociological Study. Edited by J. Ram- 
sey MacDonald. London, King, 1904. 

It is evident that protection is viewed favorably by many employers, 
on the specific ground that it prevents systematic overtime. On the 
whole they are of the opinion that after overtime the next day's work 
suffers. (Page 82.) 

B. used to work from 8 a. m. to 8 p. m. regularly, including Saturdays. 
. . . She disliked overtime, was tired out at the end of a day's work, and 
thought the other women were too, and she had often noticed how badly 
the work was done after eight or nine hours at it. Later on, as a fore- 
woman, she noticed that the girls after overtime always loafed about the 
next day and did not work well. (Page 84.) 

Another forewoman gave it as her deliberate opinion that when over- 
time is worked the piece workers do not make more, as a rule, for they get 
so tired that if they stay late one night, they work less the next day. 

This is the unanimous view held by the forewomen, and it comes with 

'* considerable force from them, as it is they who have to arrange to get 

work done somehow within a certain time. They are the people who 

have to put on the pressure, and are in such a position as to see how any 

particular system of getting work done answers. (Page 87.) 

The Economic Journal, Vol. XIV. 1904. The Employment of Women in 
Paper Mills. B. L. Hutchins. 

The relatively short hours now customary are generally felt to make 
for efficient work. ... In envelope making overtime may be worked 
thirty times per annum; and in a large envelope and account book works 
the foreman, whilst regretting that the girls should not be free to earn 
more extra money in this way, almost in the same breath stated that over- 
time was of little use from his point of view, as, if the girls stayed late one 
day, they were sure to come late the next. (Pages 246-247.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME: INJURY TO OUTPUT 443 

Rapports sur V Application pendant VAnnee 1899 des Lois {1892-1893) FRANCE 
reglementant le Travail; par les Inspedeurs Divisionnaires du Travail. 
[Reports on the Working of the {French) Factory Laws of 1892 and 
1893, in the year 1899. By the Pt^ench Factory Inspectors.] Paris, 
1900. 

The later work lasts into the night, the more fatigued is the working 
woman, and as a result her work is poorly done, so that she is often obliged 
to do over in the morning what she had done the night before. 

We repeat, therefore, the recommendations that we make every year: 
that a good organization of work with plenty of workers would be more 
profitable to the employers than overtime. M. Lagard, Marseilles. 
(Page xxxix.) 

First International Conference of the Consumers' Leagues. Geneva, 1908. 
La Veillee: Ahus et Responsabilites. [Overtime: Abuses and Re- 
sponsibilities.] Mme. A. Paul Juillerat, French Factory Inspector. 
Fribourg, 1909. 

Overtime in all trades is worked at certain times of the year, but no- 
where is it longer and more burdensome than in the clothing trades. 
(Page 48.) . . . In general, it is a loss to the employers; over-hours are 
almost always paid at higher rates; and the cost of them is enhanced by 
higher running expenses, — heat, light, etc. The fatigue from the day's 
work already performed makes the workers slower, and less careful in 
performing the extra tasks, and the work of the next day, taken up after 
insufficient rest, will drag still more and be still more imperfect. This, 
true even of the first 2 or 3 days of overwork, will become more and more 
true as the sewing women become more and more fatigued and, finally, 
exhausted. (Page 49.) 

Report of the Nebraska Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- UNITED 
1908. "^"^ 

Of his experience . . . one manufacturer . . . says : 
"When the business first came under my control, the men were work- 
ing a nominal nine-hour day. But the real day was much longer. Re- 
course was had to overtime on the slightest provocation, and during the 
months of October and November overtime was the daily rule. In those 
months we have to get ready our goods for Christmas consumption, and 
the men used to be at work night after night till 8 or 9 o'clock. I have 
known them to leave the factory as late as 11 o'clock. When I com- 



444 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



plained of the system I was told that it was absolutely necessary; that 
the work could not be gotten through otherwise. However, I knew that 
it was bad for myself as well as for the men. A man who has done a 
reasonable day's work is not fit to give good work at night, and if he makes 
the attempt his work next morning suffers. So I put my foot down and 
stopped the practice almost entirely." (Page 189.) 



D. Uniformity of Restriction Essential for Regular Distribu- 
tion of Employment 

(1) Prohibition of Overtime Promotes Better Organization 

OF Industry 

Wherever the employment of women has been prohibited 
for more than ten hours in one day, the requirement of 
dangerously long and irregular hours in the season trades 
is shown to be unnecessary. In place of alternating 
periods of intense overwork with periods of idleness, em- 
ployers have found it possible to avoid such irregularities 
by foresight and management. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1893. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

As far as this district is concerned, the only demand for this overtime 
comes from an inconsiderable minority of manufacturers. . . . Although 
there are more than 4000 who could claim to make it (overtime) not more 
than 200 . . . apparently do so. I am persuaded that in a majority of 
instances in which overtime has been made by these 200 employers, it 
has been brought about either by the greed, tyranny, or incompetence of 
the managers or employers. 1 believe that much of the apparent necessity 
for working overtime is simply the result of want of forethought and or- 
ganization on the part of the employers and their managers. ... I came 
across a very large firm employing several hundred workpeople on work 
of an exceptionally important and public nature. It has been the custom 
in the works at the end of each month to keep all hands, young and old, 
at work for two days and nights. . . . They said their arrangements could 
not possibly be interfered with without causing serious public incon- 



OVERTIME AND ORGANIZATION OF WORK 445 

venience. ... I answered that I would allow them two months to re- great 
arrange their system of working. ... Before the two months were over 
I met the manager of the works, who said that my visit had been the best 
thing that had happened to them for years, that the strain of working 
under the old system had been almost unbearable as much to the managers 
as to the workpeople, that since my visit they had gone carefully into the 
whole matter, had laid the facts before their customers and had so re- 
arranged the system of working that they could commence their under- 
takings early in the month, and that there was now no further necessity 
for the great strain at the end. If such a change as this could be brought 
about in a case of such apparently exceptional difficulty, it is fair to 
assume that most of the seasons of pressure which beset certain trades can 
be provided for by forethought and arrangement, but I am afraid that 
such forethought and arrangement will never be exercised while the mis- 
chievous expedient of overtime is made so easy. (Pages 89-90.) 

How little actual demand there is for overtime on the part of protected 
hands, I think the return of this district will show. Out of nearly 9000 
occupiers of factories and workshops, only about 200 apparently avail 
themselves of the permission to work overtime. (Page 91.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XXXIV. Appendix CXXIX. 1893. 
Royal Commission on Labour. Group C. Summary of Evidence of 
Mr. C. B. Bowling, Her Majesty's Inspector of Factories. 

... I am persuaded that in the majority of instances in which over- 
time has been made by these 200 employers (out of 4000 in the district 
who could claim it), it has been brought about either by the greed, tyranny, 
or incompetence of the managers or employers. 

I believe a large proportion of it results from want of forethought and 
organization ; a good deal from an insatiable greediness and striving to steal 
a march on their neighbours, which prompts many manufacturers never 
to refuse an order, however unprepared they may be to fulfill it. . . . 

Of course the principal argument in support of this allowance of over- 
time to the trades named in the schedule, is that they are season trades, 
subject to recurring pressure at certain times. 

To a more or less degree this may be urged with regard to the vast 
bulk of manufacturing industries of the country, and if under a law framed 
for the protection of young people from an undue strain on their mental 
and physical powers, you are going to sanction any overtime at all, 1 
confess 1 cannot see where, without great injustice, you can draw the line. 
(Page 724.) 



446 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1895. Report of the Chief In- 

BRITAIN spector of Factories and Workshops. 

. . . Where organization and economy of management exist, the neces- 
sity for overtime does not exist; and that workrooms conducted under the 
apparent necessity for overtime can prosper under its withdrawal is shown 
by the fact that overtime has entirely ceased, under the control of a new 
manager, in workrooms in which under other management it had been 
excessive, and that the development of business rather than its diminution 
had been the result. 

Complaints I have received from women employed in book-binding 
and kindred trades show, that in many instances where overtime is 
worked, its necessity has been due to grave mismanagement. Women 
and girls are kept without work for several hours, sometimes for the greater 
part of the day, they are then worked at full pressure during the remaining 
hours, and to the limit of overtime exception. 

Various employers of labour have shown it to be possible to satisfy 
the demands of a thoughtless public and at the same time to guard the 
health of their work-people, which should remove the seeming conflict 
between the gratification of some few hundreds of inconsiderate people 
on the one hand, and on the other hand the health of several thousands of 
women and girls. (Page 12.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1903. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

There is a growing disposition on the part of a number of employers 
to relinquish the habit of overtime as not "worth the candle." . . . 
It is significant that where one occupier in a given trade avails himself 
of the permission, there are several others, apparently engaged in identical 
work, who never work overtime from year's end to year's end. There 
may sometimes be exceptional circumstances to account for this, but I am 
inclined to believe that it is more often a question of management and 
methodizing work. (Page 29.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1905. Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops. 

I am glad to be able to report, however, that many employers are be- 
ginning to aim at better economic conditions for those they employ. 
They recognize, and rightly, that it is better if possible to spread their 



OVERTIME AND ORGANIZATION OF WORK 447 

orders over a longer period for execution and to induce their clients to fall great 
in with this idea, than to have a tremendous rush for a short time and then 
be forced to turn away many of their better trained and more highly 
skilled workers at short notice. (Page 232.) 

The Eight-Hours Day. Sidney Webb and Harold Cox, B.A. London, 
Walter Scott, 1891. 

"Press of work arising at recurring seasons of the year" does not 
necessarily involve the permission of overtime. Such press can also 
generally be met, either by taking more people into employment when the 
pressure comes or by getting stock ready beforehand. Either of these 
ways is preferable to overtime working. Moreover, as a matter of fact, 
there is a great deal of superstition about the necessity for overtime 
working at certain seasons. No better illustration of this could be found 
than that of Mr. Beaufoy, related in the Appendix. An important part 
of Mr. Beaufoy's business is the manufacture of British wines, and, as 
everyone knows, British wines are consumed more freely at Christmas 
than at any other time of the year. Consequently, here appears a clear 
case for a season of overtime. And in fact when Mr. Beaufoy succeeded 
to the business there was no limit to the amount of overtime worked during 
the months of October and November. But Mr. Beaufoy on general 
grounds thought the system was bad, and determined to put it down. 
He has put it down absolutely and completely, and his business has 
benefited by the alteration. (Page 160.) 

The Economic journal. Vol. XIV. London, 1904. The Employment oj 
Women in Paper Mills. B. L. Hutchins. 

The restriction of overtime is chiefly felt in the processes of finishing 
the manufactured article, and may give a certain stimulus to the develop- 
ment of machinery, as appears indirectly from the statement of a manu- 
facturer to the Commission, that overtime was required because he had 
only one pair of rollers. "We ought to have two." (Report, page 309.) 
In a large envelope mill a great deal of machinery has been introduced to 
save woman 's labour; the reason assigned by the employer was that there 
is locally a deficiency of labour of this class, and a scarcity of women and 
girls. It was, however, stated later on by a foreman in the same mill, 
that the restriction of overtime had previously been found very incon- 
venient, and more machines having been introduced, any sudden pressure 
of business could now be successfully dealt with. . . . Yet the demand for 



44^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT women's work is keen and still increasing in the same mill. (Pages 246- 

BRITAIN 247 \ o \ & 



The Economic Journal. Vol. XVIII. London, 1908. Gaps in our 
Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins. 

Another highly desirable reform in regard to hours of work would be 
the abolition of overtime. 

Overtime has also been made illegal for young persons in all trades, 
and also for women in textile, and in some non-textile, industries. Ex- 
emptions are still permitted in industries in which the nature of the em- 
ployment is supposed to require elasticity, as, for instance, the making of 
wearing apparel, Christmas gifts, etc., etc. The workers in these em- 
ployments are thus liable to be kept for very long speeds of work at cer- 
tain seasons. Considering how long the daily hours under the Factory 
Act still are, it appears utterly unreasonable to require overtime as well. 
A master once said to me: "In nine hours the girls have done as much 
work as is in them to do." The permission of overtime is simply a pre- 
mium on irregularity and bad organization. Permission to make up 
"lost time" and work overtime used to be granted in the textile industry, 
but it has gradually been recognized as a source of weakness, the exceptions 
have been shut off one by one, and the "normal day" has become more 
and more the standard. The trend is unmistakably to the prohibition 
of overtime, and the sooner the better, if we value the health of working 
girls and women. (Pages 224-225.) 



GERMANY JahreshericUe der Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich IViirttemherg 
fiir das Jahr 1901. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirttemherg, 1901.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1902. 

It is our opinion that, in all trades where overtime has become the rule 
at definite seasons of the year, ways and means should have been dis- 
covered by this time for eliminating it, either by doing work ahead in the 
dull season or by taking on additional hands in the busy season. (Page 
11.) 



Drucksachen des Kaiserlichen Statistischen Amts, Ahth. fiir Arheiter Statis- 
tik, Erhehungen Nr. 3, Teil I. 1903. [Puhlications of the German 
Imperial Office of Statistics, Department of Labor Statistics, Inquiry 
No. 3, Part I. 1903.] Cher die Arheitsieit der Gehilfen und Lehrlinge 



OVERTIME AND ORGANIZATION OF WORK 449 

in Hand els gewerhe und Kaufmdnnischen Betriehen. [On the Hours of GERMANY 
Shop Assistants and Apprentices.] {Investigation made in 1901.) 
Berlin, 1904. 

The blame for many bad conditions must be ascribed to the absence of 
adequate legal restrictions on length of working time. So long as working 
hours are not limited, the employer does not meet extra work by bringing 
in extra help, but by overworking his staff by overtime ... for the work 
must be done. (Page 34.) 

It is often hard to define "overtime." The line between "working 
time" and "overtime" is not easily drawn unless "working time" is 
specifically limited by law. . . . The testimony shows that many business 
firms keep their employees busy until near midnight or even 1 a. m. 
Such overtime is often due to inadequate accommodation or to poor 
management, and disappears when these are improved. From Diissel- 
dorf the reports stated that this excessive overtime, often persisting for 
months and running until late in the night, was complained of by all who 
were afi"ected by it as the greatest hardship they had to endure. (Page 
41.) 

The chief complaint of employees as to late overtime is not entirely 
of the overwork itself, but of the fact that it is almost always avoidable. 
The causes of late work are actually poor arrangements or insufficient 
personnel. (Page 43.) 



Rapports sur V Application pendant VAnnee 1899 des Lois {1892-1893) France 
reglementant le Travail; par les Inspecteurs Divisionnaires du Travail. 
[Reports on the Working of the {French) Factory Laws of 1892 and 
1893, in the Year 1899. By the French Factory Inspectors.] Paris, 
1900. 

Would the suppression of overtime be difficult of execution and of a 
nature to disorganize the industries that now benefit by it? The facility 
with which certain establishments have voluntarily abolished it must 
dissipate all fears on this subject. 

According to the report of M. Laporte, an inspector in Paris, most of 
the great furriers' establishments have stopped evening overtime, and 
they have arranged to have their employees come (in the rush season) an 
hour or two earlier in the morning. 

The 11th and 12th hours are paid at night-work rates, and all work 
stops at 9 p. M. They find this arrangement satisfactory. (Page xl.) 
29* 



450 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELGIUM 



imiTED 
STATES 



Royaume de Belgique. Rapport presents a M. le Ministre de VIndustrie 
et du Travail. [Report made to the Belgian Minister of Commerce and 
Labor.] Travail de Nuit des Ouvrieres de VIndustrie dans les Pays 
Etrangers. [Night Work for Women in Industry in Foreign Countries.] 
Maurice Ansiaux. Brussels, 1898. 

Nevertheless, where the law limiting the frequency and extent of 
evening work is enforced, has it not at least caused considerable incon- 
venience? Is it not a source of incessant embarrassment in the execution 
of orders? 

I have asked most competent persons these questions: the very in- 
teresting observations which they have made may be summarized in the 
following manner: 

Under the influence of regulation, a more wholesome organization of 
work has come about. (Page 60.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909, 
Woman and Child Wage-earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

Factory administration is now more intelligent than heretofore, ele- 
ments of cost are more closely watched, future markets are more con- 
fidently and accurately estimated, all of which makes it more economical 
to anticipate the stress season by preparing in advance for its demands 
than to allow work to accumulate and introduce confusion into the factory 
organization. This eifect of the factory laws first began to be felt strongly 
after the Act of 1867 was passed. (Page 52.) 



(2) Prohibition of Overtime Promotes Regularity of 
Employment 

Wherever the employment of women has been prohibited 
for more than ten hours in one day, a more equal distribution 
of v^ork throughout the year has followed. Regular em- 
ployment replaces alternation of overwork and non-employ- 
ment. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



Hansard's Parliamentary Debates. Vol. 92. 1847. 

Bishop of Oxford : 

. . . But the question was not, what was the portion of time deducted 



OVERTIME AND REGULARITY OF WORK 451 

in the course of a single day, but what was the amount of prohibition from great 
labour for the year round? He considered it to be only a prohibition 
against uncertain labour, and that taking the period of the last 10 years, 
it would be found though at some intervals men were idle, and at others 
they were overworked, that upon the average the work actually performed 
was not more than 10 hours a day. What was the result? It showed 
that there existed a great desire on the part of the manufacturers to em- 
ploy large bodies of men extra hours at uncertain periods, to meet sudden 
demands, instead of being willing to share the market with others by 
employing men, for limited hours, thereby keeping up a continued stroke 
of work, and a continued average demand of labour. (Pages 937-938.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XV. 1870. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending October 31, 1869. 

Irregularity is bad for all parties; for the adult and married females, 
because they rise late and waste their time, and consequently have to 
work such late hours that they have no time to attend to their domestic 
duties in the evenings, much less to mental improvement, and also be- 
cause under irregular hours they make less time and earn less wages per 
week than under fixed hours. (Page 217.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vols. XXIX-XXX. 1876. Factory and Work- 
shops Acts Commission. Vol. XXIX. Report. Appendix E. Re- 
port of Conference of Members of Women's Trade Unions on the Factory 
and Workshops Acts, 1875. 

. . . The permission granted to season trades for the extension of the 
hours to fourteen per day, during certain periods of the year, should 
be withdrawn, with the view of equalizing the work throughout the 
year. . . . 

Bookbinders complained that the trade was most unnecessarily con- 
sidered by the law a season trade. . . . The existence of the modification 
made employers careless of due economy in time. (Page 193.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

Why, then, allow overtime? The result of overtime is essentially in- 
jurious; there is a great push for time, people work long hours, often too 
long hours; then all is over for a time, the workpeople have made money 



452 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT and Spent it, over-production is encouraged, and the rest of the year there 

is nothing, comparatively speaking, to do. (Page 299.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XII. 1902. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and fVork shops. 

It is often said that the rigidly fixed hours for work and meals in fac- 
tories tend to make of the worker a machine, taking no actual personal 
interest in her work, while actually the eifect is to help her, if the work 
does not occupy too great a part of the day, to be a person of some vigour 
interested in the work, but not entirely to the exclusion of other things, 
for which she can count on regular periods of leisure. (Page 178.) 

English Factory Legislation. Ernst von Plener. London, Chapman 
and Hall, 1873. 

By establishing a uniform and restricted working day, the Legislature 
exerted a most beneficial influence over the whole working class; the com- 
pulsory fixed time for commencing and leaving off work acted as a salu- 
tary check upon idleness as well as against excessive zeal, both which are 
alike injurious to morals and health. Fortunately both working men and 
masters alike are generally beginning to appreciate the advantages which 
regularity in the working system and in the mode of living, resulting from a 
judicious adjustment of the working hours, confers on all concerned, and 
thus it has come to pass that factory legislation, which on its first intro- 
duction was ridiculed as a monstrosity and prima facie, an abortive ex- 
periment, and which, moreover, was attacked and set at nought as an 
infringement on personal and industrial liberty, is today recognized in 
England as one of the soundest foundations of social reform and one of the 
most beneficial institutions of the State. (Pages 114-115.) 

The Case for ihe Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

The direct and constant result of enforcing standard conditions of em- 
ployment is, . . . to raise the capacity of the workers. The prevention 
of excessive or irregular hours of work, the requirement of healthy con- 
ditions, and the insistence on decency in the factory or workshop — the 
direct results of factory legislation — represent exactly what is required to 
extricate the mass of working women from the slough of inefficiency in 
which they are unfortunately sunk. Hence, so far from regulation being 
any detriment to the persons regulated, it is, as all experience proves, a 
positive good. (Page 210.) 



OVERTIME AND REGULARITY OF WORK 453 

British Association for the Advancement of Science. 72nd Meeting, great 

'R'RTTAT'Nr 

1902. Women's Labour: Second Report of the Committee . . . ap- 
pointed to investigate the Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating 
Women s Labour. London, Murray, 1903. 

It is an important but very difficult problem to decide what hours 
would now be worked in the factories if there were no Acts. The follow- 
ing instances go to show that the hours would be longer; the cases above 
given where the women stop, but their work is carried on; the attempt of 
the women to put in extra work at meal times, the frequent cases of over- 
time worked by men in various parts of the factories; . . . the longer 
hours said to be worked by non-regulated home workers. . . . Employers 
and workers often admit that overtime, when allowed is not economical, 
and that 56>2 hours is as long as women can work efficiently. Employees 
are very anxious to get off in the evening. . . . Without the Acts it seems 
certain that less uniformity would have been obtained, and that in many 
cases excessive hours would now be worked; and it is not easy to instance 
any occupation where the hours would probably have been shorter. . . . 
There is no direct evidence as to the effect on women's industrial or social 
efficiency, but there is general agreement that longer hours would be 
harmful and that the existing restrictions are beneficial. . . . Their 
effects on the comfort, health, and regularity of the lives of the workers 
have been great and beneficial. (Pages 293-295.) 



British Association for the Advancement of Science. 73rd Meeting. 1903. 
Women's Labour: Third Report of the Committee . . . appointed to 
investigate the Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's La- 
bour. London, Murray, 1904. 

Employees, so far as their opinions have been gathered, are unanimous 
in approving the restriction to the maximum allowed. . . . The Acts 
have had considerable effect in spreading work more uniformly through 
the week, month, or year, where there is occasional pressure. . . . 

There is some evidence that the regularization of hours has promoted 
the efficiency of women as productive agents. (Pages 340-341.) 

Women's Work and Wages. Edward Cadbury, M. Cecile Matheson, 
and George Shann. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1906. 

On the whole, however, employers are beginning to recognize that over- 
time " does not pay." " Loss of overtime is not necessarily a loss of work. 



454 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



but a redistribution (and an economic one, too) of the times at which 
work is done and does not therefore mean a loss of income, but a steadying 
and regulation of income." (Page 38.) 



GERMANY Jahresberichte des Gewerhe-Aufsichtsheamten im Konigreich Wurttemberg 
fur das Jahr 1902. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors in the Kingdom 
of IViirtteniberg for 1903.] Stuttgart, Lindemann, 1904. 

But it is urgently necessary that the abuses (of overtime) which have 
become common should be prevented and that the habit of some employers 
of working overtime to the utmost legal limits, should be stopped by the 
gradual restriction and ultimate prohibition of all overtime. . . . These 
abuses are repeatedly spoken of in the reports, . . . employers compelling 
their women to work at times, with feverish intensity for 13 hours, while 
perhaps a little later there is no work or scarcely any. (Page 194.) 

Handworterhuch der Staatswissenschaft. Bd. I. [Compendium of Political 
Science. Vol. /.] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of Political 
Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. Lexis, 
Professor of Political Science in Gottingen and Edg. Loening, Pro- 
fessor of Law in Halle. Arbeitsieit. [Hours of IVork.] Dr. H. 
Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

A rigid limitation of the daily hours of work is often advocated, to be 
only relaxed under circumstances of extraordinary urgency, with the idea 
that thus the extremes in the lives of workers, the evil alternation between 
forced production and crises might be obviated. (Page 1204.) 

PRANCE Rapports pre sent es a M. le Ministre du Commerce, de V Industrie, des Posies 

et des Telegraphes par les Inspecteurs du Travail. [Reports of the 
(French) Factory Inspectors to the Minister of Labor, etc.] La Question 
de V Interdiction du Travail de Nuit. [The Question of the Prohibition 
of Nightwork.] M. Legard, Inspector. Paris, 1900. 

The working class demands two things; regularity in the distribution 
of working time, and a living wage. . . . Night work means superactivity 
at certain seasons, followed by periods of unemployment. (Page 62.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Illinois Factory Inspectors. 1893. 

A valuable result of the new law already to some extent obtained, is the 
greater uniformity of work and rest insured to girls and women. Formerly 



OVERTIME AND REGULARITY OF WORK 455 

the custom prevailed of working overtime in many trades during a part united 
of the year and then closing the factory outright, or working three or four 
very long days a week. This irregularity is one of the most cruelly de- 
moralizing experiences of the working girl's life, injurious alike to health 
and to every habit of thrift and persevering effort. (Pages 18-19.) 

Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. Women Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. Irene 
Osgood, Special Agent. 

These illustrations are sufficient to indicate the importance of con- 
sidering irregularity of employment, overtime, and undertime, in any 
study of wages. It affects the wages, habits, and morals of employees 
more than any other factor in the industry. Certainty of an occupation, 
and regularity of work are practically essential to the welfare and happi- 
ness of those who earn their living day by day. (Page 1060.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor. No. 80. January, 1909. 
Woman and Child Wage-Earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

Though in many factories the later laws have not reduced hours of 
work, they have exercised an important influence in making these hours 
more regular. Irregularity is due principally to two causes, both of which 
are in great part remediable. The first is the bad working habits of the 
operatives themselves. In the old days workmen would lay off the first 
part of the week and then try to make up wages by excessive hours just 
before pay day. This is still an evil where manufacturing is carried on in 
the homes. The second cause is the seasonal demand for goods in some 
industries, which presses manufacturers for heavy deliveries at certain 
times of the year. They used to meet this by putting on extra employees, 
sending work to outworkers, and by overtime. These were uneconomic 
expedients, and under the influence of the factory regulations a better 
distribution of work throughout the year has in many trades already 
been accomplished. Of course when factories are working fewer than the 
maximum number of hours allowed by law, they may employ women and 
children up to that maximum, in case of emergency, without restriction. 
This is done in many instances. Factory accommodations are more 
adequate than formerly, so that extra hands can be taken on when needed. 
This causes some irregularity of employment for these temporary em- 
ployees; or rather it might be said that they are given an opportunity for 



456 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



empIo> ment that would not exist if the regular hands worked longer hours. 
(Page 52.) 

The great effect of this act (1867) stipulating a normal day was to 
lessen irregularity rather than to lessen hours worked per week, for even 
before 1867 the hours of work in a week often would not exceed 60. The 
need for alteration was not so much due to the number of hours as to the 
irregularity of work. At times of pressure employers worked their em- 
ployees any number of hours they pleased, and the irregular habits of 
the work people themselves often compelled employers to work long hours 
to make up for lost time. (Page 53.) 

. . . There are some material and moral benefits to be traced directly 
to the factory laws. They have made the hours of work more regular, 
relieving workers of the tyranny of their own bad habits and of inefficient 
industrial administration, whereby formerly they experienced alterna- 
tions of idleness and excessive labor, injurious alike to their health and 
morals. (Page 72.) 



(3) Effect on Wages 

The additional wages of overtime work are often urged 
as reasons for allowing such work after the regular hours 
of labor. But such wages, even where they are obtained, 
are earned at too dear a cost to the workers. Extra living 
expenses cut down the slight extra income, while the in- 
juries to health received in overtime work more than out- 
weigh the small pecuniary balance. Often, too, after over- 
time is established, the longer hours become the rule, and 
are paid no higher than the original shorter day. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1840. First Report from Select Com- 
mittee on the Act for the Regulation of Mills and Factories. 

Witness, L. Horner, Inspector of Factories: 

1616. You are aware that the persons working in factories have for 
a succession of years petitioned Parliament for a reduction of the hours of 
labour in factories to 10; are you also aware that in all the petitions they 
have ever sent they have never expressed any opinion whatever as to 
what the wages would be, but they have constantly complained of the 
hardship they had to endure by being worked longer than their physical 
powers afforded them means of doing compatibly with their health, and 



OVERTIME AND WAGES 



457 



that thev have been willine to make the experiment of limiting it to 10 great 

BRITAIN 

instead of 12, provided an Act was passed for that purpose regardless of 
the consequences that might befall them in the rate of wages? — I am 
strongly impressed with the belief that the workers who have come for- 
ward in that way, have done so under a conviction that there would be no 
reduction in wages eventually, although it might take place at first, but 
that they would get in a short time as much for 10 hours' labour as they 
at present get for 12 hours' labour. (Page 121.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 
of Factories and Workshops. 



1878. Reports of the Inspectors 



The women at the close of the twelve hours, which period constitutes 
the usual day's work, were tired and exhausted, and hardly did enough 
after that to pay for the gas consumed. Book sewers and folders are all 
paid by piece work, and if overtime were continued for a few weeks to- 
gether their earnings would soon fall to about the same amount as when 
they worked the regular hours. (Page 14.) 

Documents Parlementaires. Chambre des Deputes, 10 Juin, 1890. Annexe FRANCE 
649. Rapport sur le travail des enfants, des Jilles mineiires et des 
femmes dans les etahlissements industriels, par M. R. Waddington. 
[Parliamentary Documents, French Chamber of Deputies, June 10, 
1890. Annex 649. Report on the labor of Children, Young Girls, 
and IVomen in Industrial Establishments.] Senator Richard Wad- 
dington. 

Supper and carfare (after overtime work) often exhaust the additional 
pay. Fatigue and sickness resulting from overwork compel absence and 
corresponding loss of wages. A better organization of work would remedy 
this and make over hours unnecessary without harm to business. (Page 
1087.) 



Documents Parlementaires. Senat, 22 Juin, 1891. Annexe 138. Rap- 
port sur le travail des enfants, des Jilles mineures, et des femmes 
dans les etahlissements industriels. [Parliamentary Documents of the 
French Senate, June 22, 1891. Annex 138. Report on the labor of 
Children, Young Girls and IVomen in Industrial Establishments.] 

M. TOLAIN. 

The abuses of such a system of overtime are flagrant, and the women 
subjected to them complain bitterly. If, even, this burden of over-fatigue 



458 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

PRANCE brought some improvement in general welfare But it does not, for the 

increased incidental expenses completely wipe out the increased payment 
of wages for overtime. And, if the employee is late in arriving at her 
working place the next morning as a result of exhaustion the evening 
before, she loses a part of her wages by fine. (Page 205.) 

Rapports sur V Application pendant VAnnee 1899 des Lois {1892-1893) 

reglementant le Travail; par les Inspedeurs Divisionnaires du Travail. 

' [Reports on the Working of the (French) Factory Laws of 1892 and 

1893 in the year 1899. By the French Factory Inspectors.] Paris, 

1900. 

Overtime necessitates extra expenses for the worker who has to sub- 
mit to it; it is more taxing to the human system and is in actual practice 
rarely paid for at a higher rate than regular work. (Page 368.) 

Whatever arrangement of work might finally be agreed upon, we are 
certain that evening overtime should be stopped. (Page 428.) 



Ministere du Commerce, de V Industrie, des Postes et des Telegraphes. Office 
du Travail. [French Labor Department] Legislation Ouvriere et 
Sociale en Australie et Nouvelle Zelande. [Social and Labor Legisla- 
tion in Australia and New Zealand.] Dr. M. Albert Metin. 
Paris, 1901. 

The experience of England has shown that, if overtime is agreed to by 
some, it is soon imposed upon others. Those who decline it are, in one 
way or another, forced out of their jobs. 

As a matter of fact the employer tends to regard the day with over- 
time as the normal day; he inclines toward a return to the former scale of 
wages but without reducing the length of working time. Thus the too 
frequent practice of overtime tends in the end to a reduction of wages. 
The conclusion is self-evident that adult workers should submit to a 
regulation of working time in their own interest. (Page 88.) 

First International Conference of Consumers' Leagues at Geneva, 1908. 
La Veillee: Abus et Responsabilites. [Overtime: Abuses and Re- 
sponsibilities.] Mme. A. Paul Juillerat, French Factory Inspector. 
Fribourg, 1909. 

After the excessive rush of the "season" there is another evil, which 
is partly the result of the first and is no less real a hardship, this is the 



OVERTIME AND WAGES 459 

unemployment of the dull season. . . . (Page 61.) There are workers FRANCE 
who are willing to work overtime for the extra gain in wages, but how many 
of them are able to lay by for the dull season? Very few. The extreme 
fatigue they endure often reduces their vitality to such a point that, weak 
and anaemic, they are obliged to expend all the little surplus gain for 
medical treatment and care. (Page 62.) 

Royaume de Belgique. Rapport presente a M. le Ministre de VIndustrie Belgium 
et du Travail [Report to the Belgian Minister of Commerce and Labor.] 
Travail de Nuit des Ouvrieres de VIndustrie dans les Pays Etr angers. 
[Night work of IVomen in Industry in Foreign Countries.] Maurice 
Ansiaux. Brussels, 1898. 

The unlimited prolongation of labor throughout the day and the night 
is humanly impossible; or if it is done anyhow, it must be paid for dearly 
and cruelly. 

A woman whose health is ruined and whose nervous system is broken 
down by prolonged and frequent evening work is no longer able to furnish 
during a given period of time work as good or as abundant as in the past. 
This is perhaps the explanation of the fact that I have more than once 
heard stated and confirmed, that the level of total wages has not fallen 
appreciably on account of the prohibition of night work. (Pages 146-147.) 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans VIndustrie. Rapports sur son im- AUSTRIA 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface hy Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit 
des Femmes dans VIndustrie en Autriche. [Night Work of Women in 
Austrian Industry.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The woman who passes all her evenings at outside work can hardly 
prepare dinner, accomplish the minor daily labors of her housework, and 
devote part of her time to her children. (Page 101.) 

If there is indeed ground for supposing that the industrial activity of 
married women rarely brings in certain cases more than sufficient to pay 
for the management of the house and the care of the children, it is cer- 
tainly beyond dispute that the majority of the wages obtained by over- 
time hours will not, in any manner, compensate for the neglect of domes- 
tic duties. . . . It is necessary, moreover, for mothers to take account of 
the fact that they are without doubt able to place their children in safe 
places during the day, but not in the evening. (Page 102.) 



460 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and 
Conditions of Capital and Labor Employed in Manufactures and Gen- 
eral Business. Vol VII. 1900. 

Mr. Samuel Gompers, President American Federation of Labor: 
1 am opposed to overtime work except in a case of absolute necessity, — 
for the safety of life and the preservation of property from destruction. 
Overtime is nothing more than the lengthening of the day's work. It 
becomes habitual, and when it becomes the habit of the employers the 
rule is that the wages paid for overtime, including those of the day's 
work, do not exceed the wages which have been paid for the regular day's 
work; that is, after a while it happens that overtime — overwork — be- 
comes the rule and is no longer overwork. . . . Overtime makes the work- 
man slovenly, deadens his senses, makes him careless of himself and fellows. 
(Pages 613-614.) 



Report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics. 1907- 
1908. Part VII. IVomen Workers in Milwaukee Tanneries. Irene 
Osgood, Special Agent. 

The bad effect of overtime work on wages intensified by the piece- 
rate system, can be illustrated by the records of the girls. 



Table I II. — Hours, Wages, and Rate per Hour Based on Piece Work Wages 
FOR THE Girls. — Showing the Effect of Overtime on Earnings. 





A 


B 




C 




Date, 1906 




Wages 
Earned 

{2 Weeks) 


1^ 


S2 

^1 


Wages 

Earned 

(2 Weeks) 


1^ 




Wages 

Earned 

{2 Weeks) 


Rate per 
Hour 


January 15 . 


120 


^22.50 


$.187 


120 


$24.14 


$.20 


120 


$18.65 


$.155 


January 31 . 


129 


18.50 


.14 


60 


6.05 


.10 


133 


19.33 


.145 


March 31... 


132 


20.67 


.157 


140 


19.63 


.14 


134 


14.65 


.107 


May 15 ... . 


133 


17.02 


.128 


133 


11.79 


.08 


130 


18.25 


.14 



The earnings of A, as shown in Table III, under the piece rate system, 
ranged from 12.8 to 18.7 cents per hour; B ranged from 8.4 to 20 cents 
per hour; while C's hourly earnings ranged from 10.7 to 15.5 cents. In 
each case the highest wages per hour were received on those days when 



OVERTIME AND WAGES 461 

fewer hours were spent at work. Similar variations exist in the earnings united 

• STATES 

of many others. But when the attention of one of the girls who had 
worked in the tannery for more than four years was called to this apparent 
anomaly in her own earnings, she was unable to explain it. Her mother 
said: "I have often noticed that the longer she works the less she gets." 
After some further thought the girl finally concluded that her exception- 
ally low earnings were probably occasioned by work upon a class of skins 
for which a lower rate was received. Of course it might be possible that 
she worked with less vim or intensity on those particular days. Or it 
might easily have been due to the effect of overtime as expressed by a 
London forewoman: "when overtime is worked the piece workers do not 
make more, as a rule, for they get so tired that if they stay late one night 
they work less the next day." There is ample evidence to show that when 
overtime is worked for several weeks under the piece rate system, earnings 
inevitably tend to fall to about the same amount received for regular hours 
of labor. In the long run, therefore, overtime work brings them no extra 
reward under the piece rate system. It brings them instead lowered 
forces of vital energy. (Pages 1058-1059.) 



(4) Effect of Requiring Extra Pay for Overtime 

In those communities which require by law extra high 
pay for overtime the system tends to be automatically abol- 
ished. When employers are not able to keep their em- 
ployees for evening work without a substantial outlay in 
wages, they have found it possible to reduce overtime exten- 
sively by better organization and foresight. 



Report of the Queensland Chief Inspector of Factories and Shops for the 
Period from 1st Jan. to 30th Sept., 1901. Brisbane, 1902. 

Objection has been made by certain occupiers to the provision insist- 
ing upon a minimum payment of 6d. per hour for overtime, but I am 
strongly of opinion that there is no more just or effective provision in the 
section for limiting the amount of overtime worked by those more or less 
helpless employees. It is unfortunate that, in making this provision for 
the payment for overtime, provision was not also specifically made in the 
interests of piece workers. This is quite obviously an oversight, but, 
nevertheless, full advantage is being taken of it, and the unfortunate 



AUSTRALLA. 



4^2 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

AUSTRALIA effect of it is that, while a young employee paid by weekly wages who is 
working overtime receives a minimum of 6d. per hour, another one em- 
ployed by piece work on perhaps very similar work receives the ordinary 
rate of pay. A reference to the table showing the amount of overtime 
worked will at once reveal part of the effect of this provision in the re- 
duced amount of overtime worked by boys (who are mostly time workers) 
compared to that worked by females. (Page 7.) 

Report of the Queensland Chief Inspector of Factories and Shops for 1902. 
Brisbane, 1903. 

Overtime must not be worked by these employees more than two nights 
in succession, and must be paid for at the rate of time and a half, the 
minimum payment being at the rate of 6d. per hour. This makes the 
^ employment of young labour, as a rule, unremunerative, and conse- 
quently it is not availed of except in pressing cases. These provisions 
may press heavily on some occupiers for whose work young labour is 
ordinarily quite suitable, and other hands cannot be engaged to work the 
overtime required, but when all occupiers are treated alike the hardship 
is a small one. (Page 8.) 

Report of the Victoria Chief Inspector of Factories, IVork-Rooms and Shops 
for 1907. 

Although the hours of labour for males over 16 years of age are not 
limited, still in the majority of trades in which the wages are fixed by 
Wages Boards, the wage provided is for a week of 48 hours, and overtime 
rates have to be paid for any time worked in excess of that number. This 
has had the effect of making 48 hours the recognized weekly hours for a 
week's work where the Determinations of Wages Boards apply, but it 
has also affected numbers of workers that are employed far from cities 
or towns, and has proved beneficial to those who do not come under the 
Factories Acts at all. For instance, within the last year or two the saw- 
millers, whose works are carried on chiefly in shires, now recognize the 48 
hours limit, and I am informed on good authority that at least one manager 
of a large saw-mill has stated that he has found by experience that by 
conceding the 48 hours he has suffered no loss, though he has made no re- 
duction in wages. (Page 67.) 

My experience is that suspensions to be allowed to work overtime are 
not availed of unless it is imperative. The stringent conditions as to pay- 
ment for more than 48 hours' work are effective in minimizing overtime, 



OVERTIME AND WAGES 



463 



as also does the fact that it is recognized that the fatigue which results Australia 
from long hours of night work prevents the ordinary amount of work being 
done next day. (Page 68.) 



Report of the New Zealand Department of Labour. 
MaKay, 1908. 



1908. 



Wellington new 

ZEALAND 



There has been comparatively little overtime worked in shops during 
the year. The fact that a permit is necessary and that such overtime 
has to be paid for at time and a half has had the eflfect of reducing the 
overtime very considerably. (Page xx.) 



Sweated Industry and the Minimum Wage, 
don, Duckworth, 1907. 



Clementina Black. 



Lon- GREAT' 
BRITAIN 



Long hours, which are in effect one form of low wages, have been 
checked by the Factory Acts, but not yet ended. (Page 29.) 

It must be remembered that, in the case of workers paid by the day, 
as is usual in dressmaking establishments, and in some departments of 
laundry work, there is frequently no extra payment made for overtime. 
I have indeed heard a West-end working woman declare that overtime 
would cease if the law made payment for it compulsory; and although 
that assertion was much too sweeping, the experience of strong trade 
unions shows that when employers are compelled to pay at a higher rate 
for overtime, that necessity for overtime of which so much is heard when- 
ever the Factory Acts are under discussion, does diminish in a very re- 
markable manner. (Pages 32-33.) 



La Femme dans VIndustrie. {Woman in Industry.) R. Gonnard. FRANCE 
Paris, Colin, 1906. 

The inspector of labor of Lyons says: 

"It has come about that this decrease of the legal maximum limit of 
hours of labor (ten hours a day), which went into effect the 28th of March, 
1902, obliging the employer to pay a higher wage for overtime hours, has 
urged the manufacturers to replace their former equipment by machines 
of great producing power. In short, for the manufacturers in question, 
the regulation has become a powerful stimulus, which has driven them to 
do away with methods of manufacture already somewhat superannuated. " 
(Page 78.) 



BRITAIN 



464 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

E. Uniformity Essential for Purposes of Enforcement 

In order to establish enforceable restrictions upon work- 
ing hours of women, the law must fix a maximum working 
day. Without a fixed limit of hours, beyond which em- 
ployment is prohibited, regulation is practically nullified. 
Exemptions of special trades from the restriction of hours 
not only subject the workers in such industries to injurious 
overwork, but go far to destroy the whole intent of the 
law. The difficulties of inspection become insuperable. 

GREAT ^ British Sessional Papers. Vol. IX. 1841. Report from the Select Com- 

mittee on the Act for the Regulation of Mills and Factories. 

Your Committee . . . wish to impress upon the House, in the language 
of one of their witnesses, that "wherever there is the power of making up 
lost time, it ought to be guarded by every possible check; it is so easy to 
evade, and so difficult to detect any evasion, that every possible check 
that can be devised to prevent dishonest working ought to be introduced. 

The 4th Section "provides for time unavoidably lost in cases of acci- 
dent," and gives permission that, whenever anything shall happen to the 
machinery of the mill, whereby not less than three hours labour at any 
one time shall be lost, such time may be worked up under certain re- 
strictions. It was urged before your Committee, that, experience having 
proved the facility and frequency of abuse of this power, it ought to be 
taken away by any amended Bill. "It is a Section," says one Inspector, 
"which I believe has been productive of the grossest violations of the law, 
without the possibility of our checking it." Any accident, however 
minute, to any part of the mill-gear, has been held sufficient to justify 
the making up of lost time at some other more convenient period. . . . 
He is asked whether "it would not be rather oppressive upon the work- 
people, if no possible accident, under any circumstances, should be al- 
lowed to be worked up?" He replied, " I conceive hardship may arise in 
particular cases, but I think the balance is decidedly in favour of there 
being no possibility of working up lost time." (Page 2.) 

Another witness, an operative, is asked, "Have you any information 
as to the feelings of the working people in regard to the clause which per- 
mits working to make up lost time? — That is the source of grievance to a 



UNIFORMITY ESSENTIAL FOR ENFORCEMENT 465 

vast number, both of children and adults; I have heard them frequently great 

BRITAT'W 

say when lost time is allowed to be worked up, that they would rather lose 
their wages for the time that was lost than make it up. . . . They have 
expressed themselves strongly on that point, that they would rather lose 
their wages than work the time up. (Page 3.) 

Your Committee, referring to the evidence of the witnesses examined 
on the subject of making up lost time arising from accidents to the ma- 
chinery, etc., are of the opinion that great abuses have arisen under the 
4th Section of the Act, and would urge upon the House that effectual 
means should be taken to put a stop to this evil. (Page 4.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1842. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the Half-year ending June 30, 1842. 

Night-work no one fears, because it entails so many disadvantages; 
but it is a small excess which we have most to complain of, as it does not 
involve the necessity of two sets of overlookers and managers and there is 
consequently none of the difficulty of night-working attendant upon it; 
and it is all clear gain to the party practising it. (Page 9.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1873. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for Half-year ending 30th April, 1873. 

The difficulty of acquiring evidence, too, of this overwork is very great, 
for the danger of loss of employment on the disclosure of facts is so de- 
terrent of exact information by the oppressed workers that they will not 
appear before the magistrates to support the Sub-Inspector in his attempt 
to protect them, however urgently or indignantly that protection has been 
claimed. (Page 44.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1890-91. Report of Inspector of 
Factories. 

These modifications of the law (allowing overtime) were intended to 
meet hona fide cases of season pressure and short-notice orders, arising 
from unforeseen events, but beyond doubt under their cover much illegal 
working is carried on, the very flimsiest of pretences being made the excuse 
for continuing work after the prescribed finishing hour. 

Whenever the Act comes up for amendment I venture to think that 
some of these modifications might, without causing any real hardship, 
be limited in their scope, if not altogether repealed. (Page 49.) 
30* 



466 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol XXL 1894. Report of the Chief In- 

BRITAIN jr J J 

spector of Factories and Workshops. 

By dressmakers and milliners, . . . legal overtime is almost univer- 
sally condemned. A dressmaker's assistant, whose legal working day 
had for a considerable period lasted from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m. said to me in 
the presence of her fellow workers, "the overtime exception just spoils 
the Factory Act." . . . The popularly supposed compensation of extra 
overtime seldom exists, and the young apprentice, improver, or assistant 
who spends 14 hours a day in workrooms, often ill-ventilated and over- 
crowded, finds it diificult to understand that her day has been allotted 
to her, not by a law-breaking employer, but in accordance with the pro- 
visions of a protecting Act. (Page 11.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XIX. 1896. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

1 most cordially approve of the extensions of the Act in the various 
directions in which these have been made; but I fear that the regulations 
as to the hours of work permissible in laundries will be of little avail to 
avoid overtime so long as the somewhat senseless power is accorded of 
daily altering the period of employment. In connection with this it is 
only necessary for anyone having the most rudimentary acquaintance with 
factory life to reflect how absolutely useless the Factory Acts would have 
been during the many years of their existence if the hours in factories and 
workshops had been regulated on this principle. It is only to be hoped 
that their power may be rescinded at the earliest opportunity. (Page 18.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XVII. 1897. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

Twelve months' work among the laundries in London and the neigh- 
bourhood, in districts devoted to this industry, has afforded special oppor- 
tunities for observing the working of section 22, 1895. (Overtime.) 

The result cannot be said to be satisfactory. Employers complain 
that they cannot understand the provisions governing laundries, and 
as to the workers themselves, the ironers, washers, machine girls, packers, 
and sorters, constant intercourse with them has produced a painful 
impression of the disappointment they have experienced with regard to 
what the Act has done for them. (Pages 67-68.) 

A year's experience of the working of the sections applicable to laundries 



UNIFORMITY ESSENTIAL FOR ENFORCEMENT 467 

has proved the value, importance, and benefit of those which apply to a great 
laundry as if it were a factory or workshop, e. g. sanitation and safety, 
but as anticipated, the extreme elasticity of the rules regarding employ- 
ment has not only made evasion easy, but has given legal sanction to em- 
ployment for an excessive period on certain days if other days of the same 
week are correspondingly short. (Page 68.) 

In general, so far as periods of employment, specified meal times, and 
all matters affecting hours of work are concerned, in any industry of 
which I have experience, the treatment of branches of work as separate 
factories or workshops, except with rigid enforcement of the guarded 
conditions laid down in the order of the Secretary of State, would consti- 
tute a serious innovation on the regulation of hours by the Factory Acts 
which has been so successful in the past, and which is still a model for 
other industrial countries. Even now reformers in France, after ex- 
perience of a looser system of control of such exceptions are striving for 
the abolition of the shift system which has there often made limitation of 
hours for protected persons a matter of theory rather than a reality. 
(Page 70.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XIV. 1898. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

Nothing has been more striking than the difficulties surrounding the 
law affecting laundries. The immensely long hours, the absence of any 
conditions as to mealtimes other than that there shall be at least half an 
hour in every five hours' spell, and the extraordinary manner in which 
overtime is at present worked, combine to make the inspection of laundries 
more difficult and more ineffectual than in any trade I have had under my 
notice. (Page 107.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XI. 1900. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops for the Year 1898. 

To visit laundries is but disheartening work in most cases. The law 
is so elastic that it is almost impossible to see that its provisions as to 
hours are carried out. No adherence to the stated period on the abstract 
can be insisted on, as a substituted period can be worked on any day. 
Over and over again one hears complaints of long hours and late hours in 
laundries, and in nine cases out of ten nothing can be done as the legal 
limit has not been infringed. A woman may work from 8 in the morning 
till 11.30 at night for three nights a week, and for 30 days in the year. 



468 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT provided she is given an hour and a half for meals during that time. The 

law allows her to stand at a washtub for 14 hours in one day, or to stand 
in the heated ironing-room pressing heavy irons for that period. It is 
small wonder that accidents in laundries are not uncommon under such 
circumstances. In steam laundries, where machinery is being more and 
more used, it is disquieting to hear of the frequent accidents of the tops 
of fmgers smashed in the rollers of the collar machines, and the more 
terrible accidents caused by the calenders, where a moment's inattention 
may result in the loss of all the fmgers of one hand. . . . 

The want of a definite short day in laundries is a frequent cause of 
complaint. (Pages 178-179.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

The existence of an exemption (in the fish-curing trade) has rendered 
the administration difficult and uncertain in result. It is noteworthy 
that in this trade, in which overtime is permissible to women on sixty 
occasions in the year, I have never found overtime notices in use in any 
workshop. The occupiers do not find them necessary. Starting with an 
exemption for one process, that of "gutting, salting, and packing," the 
industry would seem to have shaken itself gradually free from control, 
until now we find fish that have been in salt for several weeks dealt with 
as perishable articles. Given plenty of time and unsuitable surroundings, 
every article of food is to some extent perishable, and when a herring has 
been kept in salt for some weeks there is no reason for working on it at 
night except the reason that the day will bring other work, and in this 
seems to lie the cause of much of the late and irregular hours of the fish- 
curing trade. (Pages 388-389.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1903. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

After six years' experience of the effect of the present regulations, it is 
impossible not to feel greatly depressed by the result; the elasticity of the 
law has tended to encourage rather than check these unsettled hours. 
(Page 174.) 

The innumerable loopholes and subterfuges which it affords to a sharp 
and unscrupulous employer places his more stupid or more scrupulous 
competitor at an unfair disadvantage, which is preventable, and therefore 



UNIFORMITY ESSENTIAL FOR ENFORCEMENT 469 

should be prevented. The broad, clear limitations, easily understood and great 

• ' BRITAIN 

capable of being exactly and thoroughly enforced, which apply to other 
industries under the Act, impose the same obligations and provide the 
same protection for all alike. This is impossible where regulations cannot be 
properly enforced and can be continually evaded with success. (Page 174.) 

Women's Work. A. Amy Bulley and Margaret Whitley. London, 
Methucn, 1894. 

Evidence given before the Labour Commission, and furnished on many 
occasions in the annual report of the Chief Inspector of Factories by Her 
Majesty's factory inspectors, proves conclusively that in the first place 
overtime is injurious; in the second that it is often totally unnecessary; 
and, in the third place, that it is impossible to keep an effective check on 
the period during which work is performed. (Page 160.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

To accede to the demand for greater elasticity is to suppose a higher 
code of morals on the part both of employers and of employed than ex- 
perience justifies, and it would also render necessary a far more elaborate 
and irritating system of inspection than at present exists. The efficiency 
of modern factory industry depends very greatly upon automatic working 
— upon its standardization of conditions; and the existing factory law 
with its inelastic provisions is, in reality, a great aid in maintaining those 
conditions of efficiency. (Page 93.) 

The fact that exceptions lead always to illegalities — that a permission 
to work till ten at night leads constantly to work till one or two in the 
morning — appears frequently. (Page 153.) 

Rapports sur V Application pendant VAnnee 1899 des Lois (1892-1893), FRANCE 
reglementant le Travail; par les Inspecteurs Divisionnaires du Travail. 
[Reports on the Working of the {French) Factory Laws of 1892 and 
1893, in the year 1899. By the French Factory Inspectors.] Paris, 1900. 

Inspectors are not armed to resist the excessive, even though legal 
demands of employers, who, with their repeated claims for exemptions 
which they call temporary, succeed actually in freeing themselves per- 
manently from the obligations of the law, with the result that they bring 
about and perpetuate that condition of partial unemployment of which 
workers rightly complain. (Page 32.) 



470 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

FRANCE Demands for exemption have increased steadily since 1895, and, with 

rare exceptions, they have not been of that emergency nature which was 
contemplated by the law. (Page 32.) 

. . . The privilege given to employers to infringe temporarily the 
prohibition of night work continues to be essentially delusive, and per- 
petuates abuses which it is almost impossible to reach or to repress. 
(Page 112.) 

It is almost impossible for employers in those industries which permit 
work to go on until 11 p. m. not to break the law, for it is always in times 
of rush work, that the necessity for overtime arises, yet the workers have 
been at work since early morning. Evening overtime agrees ill with the 
prohibition of more than 12 hours work, for, as I have said, overtime is 
always an emergency and the women who have already worked their full 
day do the overtime. Others are not to be found. (Pages 147 and 148.) 

Supervision is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, for, if the 
inspector goes after 9 p. m. the door is not opened. It has, indeed, only 
been by strategy that inspectors have succeeded in proving violations of 
the law, and strategy is not compatible with the dignity of an inspecting 
body. (Page 148.) 

"In general, the personnel retained for overtime are the experienced 
women. . . . From the time when the law went into effect the inspectors 
have never known of a different set of workers being employed in the late 
evening hours; it is always the regular staff that is burdened with this 
supplementary time." (Page 195.) 

Control of evening overtime is extremely difficult, not to say impossible; 
we must have some effective means of preventing fraud, or, what is more 
to the point, of making it impossible for the employers to commit fraud. 
(Page 268.) 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night fVork of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] U Interdiction du 
Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie Franfaise. [Prohibition 
of Night JVork of Women in Industry in France.] Prof. P. Pic, Uni- 
versity of Lyon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

It is absolutely certain that legal exemptions directly encourage fraud. 
M. Laporte, division inspector in Paris, has said so publicly, and no one 
has contradicted him. (Page 210.) 

All the annual reports of the Commission superieure du travail prove 



UNIFORMITY ESSENTIAL FOR ENFORCEMENT 47I 

that the system of evening hours stands condemned, both by reason of its france 
serious sins against hygiene and morality and the premium it places upon 
fraud. It is eminently desirable that it should be made to disappear as 
soon as possible. (Page 211.) 

Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- swiTZER- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night Work of Women in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface hy Etienne Bauer.] Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

The following, written by Inspector Schuler sixteen years ago, is still 
of value: "The extraordinarily rapid weakening of resistance to a normal 
working day, the growing disapproval of opposition, and the absence of 
any ruinous results to production in spite of very grave apprehensions in 
this regard, justify our claim that to grant frequent exceptions for over- 
time is almost equivalent to nullifying the regulations of the duration of 
work." (Page xxxiii.) 

Schriften der Gesellschaft fiir Sopale Reform, Heft 7-8. [Publications of GERMANY 
the Social Reform Society, Nos. 7 and 8.\ Die Herahsetiung der Ar- 
heitsieit fiir Frauen und die Erhohung des Schutialters filr Jugendliche 
Arheiter in Fahriken. [The Reduction of Women's Working Hours and 
the Raising of the Legal Working Age for Young Factory Employees.] 
Dr. August Pieper and Helene Simon. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

Legal exemptions for overtime . . . increase the diificulties of in- 
spection and offer not only opportunities, but temptations to disobedience 
to the laws, especially as the inspecting staff is never large enough, the 
fmes for infraction are much too small, and the unorganized workers are 
usually ready partners in disregarding legal prohibitions. Thence arise 
unceasing complaints from factory inspectors in all countries, of illegal 
overtime carried on under cover of the exemptions permitted. (Pages 
283-284.) 

Legal recognition of overtime offers a dangerously easy method of 
evading the law. In many cases the benefits of a maximum working day 
are completely nullified by exemptions, and in all cases the already dif- 
ficult task of inspection is rendered doubly difficult. "No laws, perhaps, 
are so often disregarded as labor laws, and every legal exemption enhances 
the difficulty of discovering infractions." 

The English government held it to be not only more advisable, but 
also more profitable, to put a stop to all overtime "except in cases of 
national emergency." And the English inspectors oppose it uncondi- 



472 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GERMANY tionally on the basis of their past experience. One of them says: "Legal 
permission of overtime is in my opinion a public scandal." (Page 117.) 

Labor Laws for Women in Germany. Dr. Alice Salomon. Published by 
the Women's Industrial Council. London, 1907. 

Unfortunately, however, the law provides for a number of exceptions 
to the above rules respecting the hours of labor, exceptions which render 
adequate control difficult and greatly weaken the effect of the law. (Page 
5.) 

F. Uniformity Essential to Justice to Employers 

Few employers are able to grant their employes re- 
ductions of hours, even if they are convinced of its advan- 
tages, while their competitors are under no such obligation. 
The uniform requirement of limited working hours, there- 
fore, not only checks the unscrupulous employer, but makes it 
possible for the enlightened and humane employer to shorten 
the working day without fear of underbidding competitors. 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



(1) To Encourage the Best Employers 

British Association for the Advancement of Science. 73rd Meeting. 1903. 
Women's Labour: Third Report of the Committee . , . appointed to 
investigate the Economic Effect of Legislation Regulating Women's La- 
bour. London, Murray, 1904. 

So far as legislation has furthered the reduction of hours to the period 
of greatest output, it has promoted efficiency; and in many cases the Acts 
have only made generally compulsory what the firms with most capital 
and best management had already practised. (Page 339.) 



GERMANY H andworterbuch der Staatswissenschaften. Bd. L [Compendium of 
Political Science. Vol. L] Edited by Drs. J. Conrad, Professor of 
Political Science in Halle; L. Elster, Ober Reg. Rath in Berlin; W. 
Lexis, Professor of Law in Halle. Arbeits^eit. [Hours of Work.] 
Dr. H. Herkner, Berlin. Jena, Fischer, 1909. 

As reduction of hours, under some circumstances, is entirely in the 
interests of intelligently managed enterprises, it has not been uncommon 
for employers to establish a shorter day of their own accord. 



UNIFORMITY FOR JUSTICE TO COMPETITORS 473 

It is doubtful whether the State would have arrived at the restriction GERMANY 
of hours so soon, had it not been for the experiments of such enlightened 
men. Nevertheless, it would not do to leave the whole domain of hours 
entirely to the growing insight and good intentions of employers. They 
are not always enlightened, and furthermore there are many cases which 
need reduced hours, but where it is not to be expected that the employers 
would think so. (Page 1217.) 

Retort of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1881. united 

STATES 

As a further result, we have found that a large majority of the manu- 
facturers would prefer ten hours to any greater number, "if only all 
would agree to it." Repeatedly has it occurred, when our agents have 
made known their errand, that almost the first words of the manufacturer 
would be, "It (ten hours) would be better for manufacturer and operative, 
if it could only be made universal"; and these words, always spoken so 
spontaneously as to show that they were the expression of a settled con- 
viction, may be fairly taken to express the united wisdom of the manu- 
facturers of textile fabrics in New York and New England. (Page 458.) 

As one reason for this it was constantly said, that, if all worked but ten 
hours, then it would be the same for all, and so everybody would have 
just as fair a chance for success under ten as now under more hours. 
(Page 459.) 

Bulletin of the United States Bureau of Labor, No. 80. January, 1909. 
IVoman and Child Wage-earners in Great Britain. Victor S. Clark, 
Ph.D. 

Two distinctions need to be made at the outset — between the average 
and the abnormal day in all establishments, and between the average and 
the abnormal establishment. For instance, in a clothing factory, the 
average working hours throughout the year may be 54 a week; but during 
the spring and autumn these hours, unless regulated, may rise to 66 or 
72 a week. Likewise, of several boot and shoe factories a majority, and 
those generally the largest and best establishments, may have a 54-hour 
week, while a number of small shops, ranking as factories under the law, 
may work their hands 60 hours a week. Furthermore, of a number of 
clothing factories, several may be able to keep very near the 54-hour weekly 
average throughout the year, while supplying the same trade and com- 
peting successfully with factories that work short hours some months in 
the year and excessively long hours the remaining months. 

These time variations, as well as the wage variations described later, 



474 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



found in competing industries in the same vicinity, indicate a margin 
within which the condition of workers might be improved without in- 
creasing the maximum labor cost of production, so as to raise the market 
price of the articles manufactured. For it is not reasonable to suppose 
that mills which regularly work fewer hours at higher wages than estab- 
lishments which compete with them are working at a loss. Indeed, they 
are generally making a satisfactory profit. If so, it follows that the other 
establishments are either making an excessive profit out of their employees 
or that they are operating under uneconomic conditions. If the entire pro- 
ductionof the articles in question could be centered in the best-organized 
mills, the articles could be sold at the same price, and the workers enjoy 
the advantage of shorter hours and higher wages. So far as legislation is 
able to hasten the uniform application of these superior conditions of 
production in any industry, by requiring the conditions observed in the 
best mills to be enforced in all, it is serving the workers without taxing 
the rest of the community, unless it be a few incompetent, over-grasping, 
or it may be merely unfortunate employers. English factory legislation — 
at least the modern acts — has followed the principle of bringing average 
conditions of employment up to the best conditions of employment in 
each industry. (Page 48.) 



Convention of the National Women's Trade Union League. Chicago, 
September, 1908. 

Miss Mary Anderson, of the Boot and Shoe Workers Union: 
I heard a rumor the other day that one of the manufacturers I know is 
going back to the ten-hour day. It is a sad thing, and it is just that kind 
of a manufacturer that sets the pace for the manufacturer who wants to 
do the right thing by the worker. Some do it of their own accord — only a 
few, I will say — and some have done it through the force of organization. 
When a manufacturer like this goes back to the ten-hour day and a lower 
wage, he undersells the other manufacturer, and the consequence is he has 
the bulk of the work. And you see by that we are affected as well. It 
is really the competition which sets the pace. (Page 35.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



(2) To Check the Backward Employers 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XX. 1834. Factories Inquiry. Queries 
addressed by the Central Board of Commissioners to Manufacturers. 

H. Houldsworth and Sons (cotton spinning): — 

A. 26. — It is our opinion that the moving power driving cotton ma- 



UNIFORMITY FOR JUSTICE TO COMPETITORS 475 

chinery should be limited under all circumstances, to a stated time daily, great 
and no lost time, from whatever cause, worked up; otherwise any legis- 
lative measure will be as inoperative as the present and previous Acts 
have been, and any other clause a new Act may contain will not only be 
ineffectual, but will greatly lessen the advantages which the promoters 
intend, by affording the avaricious opportunities of evasion, by working 
longer time and thereby obtaining an advantage over those who are 
anxious to conform to the law. A. 1. (Page 134.) 

Robert Dick (cotton spinning): — 

A. 26. — We are of opinion that all excess beyond the regular hours of 
work is not only avoidable, but should be put a stop to. D. 1. (Page 
144.) 

Daniel JVl'Laurfn (woolen mill): — 

A. 26. — 1 consider it quite avoidable in all spinning factories beyond 
the regular hours, and conceive it would be an advantage to the trade if 
none were permitted, as it gives unprincipled masters an undue advantage. 
A. 1. (Page 163.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XXVI. 1847-1848. Reports of In- 
spectors of Factories for the half-year ending April 30, 1848. 

Justice requires that, when the law interferes with the productive 
power of capital, all who are in the restricted trade should be kept to one 
rule as to time; and it was upon the urgent representation of Mill-owners 
that such was notoriously not the case, that in the amended Bill of 1844, 
restrictions were proposed to check such fraudulent over-working . . . 
declaring that the hours of the work of children and young persons (and 
women, by sec. 32) in every factory shall be reckoned from the time when 
any child or young person shall first begin to work in the morning in such 
factory. (Page 7.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXII. 1849. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories. Appendix. Evidence of the Opinions of Persons employed 
in Factories, respecting the Ten Hours' Act, collected in September, 
October and November, 1848. 

R. J. Saunders, Inspector: 

Former reports from some of my colleagues and from myself, declare 
clearly the opinion, that nothing but one uniform set of hours for all the 
persons employed in the same mill, in each of the protected classes, can 
effectually guard such operatives from overwork. (Page 107.) 



47^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT The humane and sound Christian principles which have governed the 



BRITAIN 



conduct of many factory occupiers and operatives, have been compara- 
tively valueless to them as a body or to the nation at large, in consequence 
of the prevalence of selfish, sordid and sensual interests, under no control, 
or only such regulations as have acted generally to the prejudice of all 
who desire to obey, whatever enactments may have been framed, because 
they are not impartially enforced on all. . . . Whatever enactments are 
laid down, should be as uniformly and efficiently enforced as is possible, 
on the 2 classes of employers and employed to whatever extent each may 
be affected by them; and also — so far as is possible, no provision should 
be enacted which cannot be impartially enforced, on all engaged in similar 
pursuits. (Pages 113-114.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI. 1867. Re-ports of Inspectors oj 
Factories. 

With respect to overtime, competition in commerce is successful often 
by decimal profits. If a man has 50,000 spindles, and each spindle re- 
volves 4000 times a minute, and at each revolution wraps round the bobbin 
three and a half inches of thread, it is easy to see how valuable minutes 
become, and what moral energy it must sometimes require on the part of 
the manufacturer to resist the winding on of a few more yards. Thus the 
power given in the Bleaching and Dyeing Works Act to make up time 
said to be lost, from any cause whatever, offers an equally irresistible 
temptation to a bleacher with not a very susceptible conscience, to add to 
the profit of his day against the conscientious labour of a neighboring 
bleacher, who would deem it a degradation to be suspected of overwork. 
It also places the conscientious bleacher at a very great disadvantage with 
his neighbor in the same market, besides exciting acrimonious feelings 
between them, weakening also the law, and the power of its administra- 
tors. (Pages 56-57.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 
oj Factories for half-year ending October 31, 1868. 

Every manufacturer ought to feel perfectly satisfied that the restric- 
tions upon the labour of his "hands" should be neither more nor less than 
those upon his competitors, and he ought to be cognizant of what his com- 
petitors are able to do and are doing. (Pages 15-16.) 

Feeling that uniformity of working is essential to a just administration 
of the law, I have endeavored to obtain this uniformity for all establish- 



UNIFORMITY FOR JUSTICE TO COMPETITORS 477 

ments in which the occupations are precisely the same in establishments great 
whether under the Factory Acts or under the Workshops Acts. (Page ^^^ain 
19.) 

Report of the Birmingham and District Trades Council upon the 
Factories Act and the Workshops Bill. 

We are of opinion — 2nd, That any measure for the regulation of the 
labour in factories should apply to all equally irrespective of the number 
employed therein, whether it be a detached building, or part or parts of 
a dwelling house so occupied. 3rd, That all should be subject to the same 
system of inspection and penalties for non-compliance. (Page 313.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XXIX-XXX. 1876. Factories and 
Workshops Acts Commission. 

Vol. XXIX. Report. 

Mr. Redgrave states: "I believe that the difficulty in making (The 
Acts) uniform arises from the fact that the circumstances of the different 
trades vary very much, — but then all the main features of the restrictions 
could be made very fairly uniform without injury to the employers at 
all." 

Similarly Mr. Baker urges, in reference to the present unequal condition 
of the law, that "we should, as far as we possibly can, equalize it all," 
and again to a question as to the reason for including all trades under the 
latest of the Factory Acts, he says, "the one great evil is that they work 
different hours." (Page 14.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XXI. 1894. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

I believe, therefore, that although a withdrawal of the overtime ex- 
ception would meet with protest from employers who have developed 
its use from an exception into a principle, there are some who would wel- 
come, and many who would be indifferent to such an amendment; that 
the large class of employers engaged in the textile and allied trades from 
whom permission to work overtime has been rigidly withheld, would 
greet as a measure of justice its withdrawal now from trades, logically 
no more entitled to the exception than their own; and that by the workers 
its abolition would be welcomed with feelings of the warmest gratitude. 
(Page 11.) 



478 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol X. 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector 

BRITAIN . J' J J r 

of Factories and Workshops. 

... A lack of loyal adherence to reasonable hours of employment 
by many laundry occupiers increases the diificulty for those who make the 
attempt in real earnestness. Many employers gladly welcome further 
regulation as a means of organizing and controlling their workers. "What 
is the use of my making the eflFort to so organize my work that the laundry 
shall close at 8 p. m. like other reasonable work-places do," said a dis- 
heartened employer; "all the neighboring laundries are open until nine, 
ten, or even eleven o'clock, and my women find it suits their irregular 
habits to go and work in these places after they leave my premises; they 
are then too tired out to arrive at my laundry till 9.30 or 10 next morning. 
If we all had to keep the same rules and close at the same time, the law 
" would work fairly; as it is I must just scramble on with the others in the 
stupid expensive old way." (Page 385.) 

A Shorter Working Day. R. A. Uadfield, of Hadfield' s Steel Foundry Co., 
Sheffield, and H. de B. Gibbins, M.A. London, Methuen, 1892. 

Again the writer is inclined to think that shorter hours would eventually 
tend to more uniform output, and to some extent, assist in modifying the 
serious fluctuations of business which are baneful alike to master and man. 
There is nothing that an employer peruses with more interest than his 
order sheets. Now, under the present system, too often there is extreme 
high pressure at one time, followed by a reversal which is exceedingly 
disastrous to all concerned. Trade suddenly expands, machinery is 
wanted in haste, telegrams fly to and fro, promises are made which often 
cannot be performed. If an order of importance is given probably penal- 
ties are specified. The manufacturer is in a state of feverish anxiety until 
the matter is cleared ofi" his books. Overtime must be worked, and there 
is high pressure all round. If a uniform day existed, and overtime were 
made more difficult all employers in each particular branch being on the 
same footing would alike work under the same conditions, and would not 
have the same temptations as at present to outbid one another and work 
at such high pressure. (Pages 116-117.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

Now and again an employer complains of some hard experience, and 
forgets that a departure from rigid rule would destroy the certainty which 



UNIFORMITY FOR JUSTICE TO COMPETITORS 479 

he feels that the law is treating him exactly as it is his competitors. Such great 

• • BRITAIN 

a feeling of security is essential to business enterprise. (Page 93.) 



Massachusetts House Documents. No. 80. 1855. Report on Ten-Hour J^™? 
Petition. 

If the large manufacturing companies reduce their hours of labor, all 
the smaller corporations immediately follow their example. The reason 
for this is found in the fact that the most intelligent portion of the opera- 
tives invariably seek employment at such places as run their machinery 
the least number of hours; and as the intelligent operative is the most 
profitable to the company, hence the fact, if the smaller corporations wish 
to retain their good help, they must conform to the same rules adopted by 
the larger ones. (Page 4.) 



Report of the United States Industrial Commission on the Relations and 
Conditions of Capital and Labor Employed in Manufactures and Gen- 
eral Business. Vol XIV. 1901. 

Testimony of Mr. Thomas O'Donnell, Secretary of the Fall River Mule 
Spinners' Association, and of the National Spinners' Association: 

It is what I might term sometimes the selfishness probably of some of 
our manufacturers that would keep the mills open at night. I do not 
think it is the press of orders, for this reason: In enlarging their plants, 
sometimes we have had an instance of it in this city where a manufacturer 
made an addition to his plant, and instead of supplying it with machinery 
for the various departments, he only supplied it with machinery for one 
department. The result was that, in order to get the necessary product 
to run that department, he had to run the other department nights. 
Now, when he built the addition, if he had equipped it with the requisite 
machinery, he would not have had to do that. This was one instance but 
during all the progress and history of the cotton industry in this city our 
manufacturers always have got along without working overtime to fill 
their orders up to 2 or 3 years ago, and the innovation in this matter by 
this man was the cause mostly. He was the cause of the other manu- 
facturers wanting to do the same. If he had never done it, there would 
not have been any other manufacturer in the city of Fall River attempting 
it, and they said: "Stop him from doing it, and we will stop doing it." 
That shows that they were doing it for their own protection. (Pages 
570-571.) 



480 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

G. Allowance of Overtime an Unnecessary Evil: Opinions 

of Officials 

The arguments in favor of allowing overtime in seasonal 
trades or in cases of supposed emergency have gradually 
yielded to the dictates of experience which show that uni- 
formity of restriction is essential to the establishment of 
a fixed and regular number of working hours. The oificials 
who have most closely observed the working of laws limiting 
hours of labor express their conviction that overtime, once 
considered a necessity, is an unmitigated evil and should be 
^ abolished. 

B^MN British Sessional Papers. Vol XIV. 1868-1869. Reports of Inspectors 

of Factories. 

. . . Practical experience teaches us that fixed and regular hours of 
labour are beneficial, not only to the workman, but to the employer also. 
And not only in the case of time labour, but the same rule will equally 
apply where piece-work is the custom. (Page 313.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1873. Reports of Inspectors of 
Factories for the half-year ending 31st October, 1872. 

(In regard to milliners and dressmakers) I strongly deprecate the 
granting of "fourteen-hour permissions," which only unsettle the trade, 
and are quite unnecessary. Such hours are very injurious to the girls 
employed. (Page 134.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVIII. 1889. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

I have been struck by the frequently expressed opinion of employers 
as well as of the employed that overtime is injurious alike to the best 
interests of both. 1 share this view strongly myself, and as far as my dis- 
trict is concerned am convinced that the amount of overtime sanctioned 
under the Act is in excess of the necessities of the case and even of the 
desire of those who have the best claim for consideration on the question 
of overtime. (Page 96.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME UNNECESSARY 48 1 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XX. 1890. Report of the Chief In- great 
spedor of Factories and Workshops. 

Doubtless public opinion has to be gradually educated and good 
reasons existed for the framing of the "overtime clauses," but I earnestly 
trust that the day is not far distant when these clauses (except for perish- 
able food) will cease to exist. ... I fear that few persons realize what 
working overtime means and 1 fear that the very liberal concessions made 
too often lead to abuse. (Page 28.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXIV. 1893. Report of Royal Com- 
mission on Labour. Group C. Appendix CXXIX. Summary of 
evidence of Mr. C. R. Bowling {Inspector of Factories). 

Finally, from my point of view then, I arrive at this position: The 
large amount of overtime sanctioned by the Act is not called for by any 
imperative necessity; that the law in thus extending its sanction to over- 
time is offering a premium in many cases to the greedy, incompetent, or 
tyrannical employers of labour; that the evils resulting from the employ- 
ment of young persons and women, especially in the case of female young 
persons, are admitted by all, and are so manifold and serious that unless 
it can be uncontestibly shown that by withholding the privilege of making 
this overtime the loss to the country would be so great that it would 
justify the infliction of some suffering on the few; the whole question 
should at once be taken into consideration. (Page 725.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1893. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

I am convinced that there is no necessity for this overtime; the season 
trade work or the press of orders would be executed just the same if over- 
time were illegal (as it is in textile and many of the non-textile trades); 
the work would only be spread over a longer period or mean the employ- 
ment of more hands. (Page 92.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

It is not necessary, for in a large proportion of cases in so called season 

trades, advantage is simply taken of the concession by certain firms to 

monopolize a larger share of work than they are warranted by their plant 

in undertaking, or by customers in unnecessarily delaying their orders 

31* 



482 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT knowing that overtime will come to their rescue. It is not desirable, for 

in many cases (that of milliners and dressmakers especially) the long hours 
are most prejudicial to the health of the employees. (Pages 299-300.) 

I consider the present state of the law with regard to overtime as noth- 
ing short of a public scandal. (Page 300.) 

For my part I have always wished to see this special (allowing over- 
time) exception revoked, excepting of course as regards perishable articles. 
In the first place it seems to me rather unfair to allow it to some trades and 
not to others, and the very ones that use it most, i. e. tailors, dressmakers, 
etc., and letterpress printers, are those I would take it away from first, as 
I believe work to be carried on under worse conditions in these trades 
than in any others, and especially so in the very large towns. (Page 308.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1895. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

Except in the case of perishable articles of food, I fail to see why so 
much distinction should be drawn between one class of employment and 
another. Every business and every handicraft is subject to fluctuation, 
and every trade is occasionally liable to calls of exceptional pressure. 
Yet the favour is granted to those handicrafts whose employees labour in 
the worst type of workshops and under the most unfavorable hygienic 
conditions. ... I am convinced if overtime were forbidden that the 
average business would suffer no loss, and what loss there might be, would 
fall upon the most unscrupulous and unconscionable employer. (Page 
194.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIX. 1896. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

In visiting workshops my attention has as formerly been much drawn 
to it, and I can only repeat again that I consider overtime an evil. Further 
experience has shown me that even when extra work means extra pay, 
overtime is felt to be a hardship by most workers, and I am confident that 
much good will result from the reduction of the occasions on which over- 
time may be worked and also from the prohibition of it for young persons. 
(Page 117.) 

"Overtime is by hypothesis an exception, but the employers by a re- 
curring demand for it turn it into a rule." This opinion, based as it is on 
carefully compiled statistics brings surely a strong reinforcement of the 
opinion held here by H. M. Inspectors of Factories, that overtime (apart 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME UNNECESSARY 483 

from the treatment of perishable articles) is an unnecessary evil. (Page great 

jj^y \ BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1897. Report of Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

Overtime was materially curtailed by the 1895 Act, but the change 
seems to have caused little real inconvenience. . . . Mr. Calder writes: 
The change in the overtime regulations which reduced the maximum 
number of occasions in any twelve months from 48 to 30 has had a more 
than proportionate effect upon the (overtime) returns in the district from 
workshops. Overtime in the latter is practically confined to the retail 
wearing apparel trade and in a number of instances, the practice formerly 
was to select a day in the middle of the week for the half holiday, and work 
till 10 o'clock p. M. on 48 Saturdays in each year. Such systematic em- 
ployment after the ordinary period is now impossible. The limitation as 
well of overtime working to "women" has not aifected the above industry 
greatly. (Pages 39 and 40.) 

(I am) much impressed by the comparative rarity of complaints as to 
hours in the larger laundries in the northern textile districts as compared 
with the South of England, and a fresh illustration appears to be herein 
afforded of the widespread benefits of a rigid restriction as to periods of 
employment. The hours of laundry workers in many Yorkshire and 
Lancashire towns are, as a rule, practically assimilated to those in the 
textile factories. The women generally will not work the longer hours; 
managers inform me that they could not work up to the 60 hours' limit 
if they wished because better conditions could be obtained by the workers 
in the mills. I except from this statement such large towns as Leeds and 
Manchester where not only the size of the town but also the immense 
variety of the industries and their conditions prevents the influence of 
the textile regulations from being effective. In these towns instances 
may be found of irregularities and excessive hours that fairly match the 
instances in London and neighborhood or in large seaside resorts. As all 
the alleged practical difficulties in the way of organizing work in laundries 
within a prescribed period are the same in the textile as in the non-textile 
districts we get in this way a gauge of force of the argument against a 
regular daily instead of the present weekly limit. It thus appears that 
whatever reason may be put forward against the daily limit, there is at least 
no cogent reason based on the nature of the work carried on in laundries. 

All the evidence as to the successful working of laundries within 
rational daily limits in the North of England demonstrates that the 



484 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT possible maximum 14 hour day of the existing regulations is as unnecessary 

in the interests of the public and of the employers as a body, as it is con- 
trary to the interests of the workers. (Page 68.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XL 1900. Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops for the year 1899. 

The prohibition of overtime for young persons imposed by section 14 
of the Factory Act 1895 has in my opinion proved to be the m.ost beneficial 
clause of that Act. It has moreover been carried out without any serious 
interference with trade and without causing much difficulty to the In- 
spectors. The further restriction in the same clause of the overtime em- 
ployment of women by reducing the number of times on which it may be 
worked in any twelve months from 48 to 30 was also a step in the right 
direction. If overtime were abolished altogether, except for preserving 
perishable articles, the season trades would soon accommodate themselves 
to doing without overtime in the same way that the cotton, woollen, linen 
and silk manufacturing trades have done, for they also are season trades. 
(Page 140.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of Chief Inspector of 
Factories and Workshops. 

I do not retract my former confession of faith that overtime for pro- 
tected persons is contrary to the spirit of the Factory Acts, injurious to 
the workers, and could with advantage be abolished except for perishable 
articles. ... As the textile trades can do without it so could other and 
less important trades. It unfortunately happens that amongst those 
trades in which overtime is allowed are some of the most sedentary and 
unhealthy, such as the making of wearing apparel, letter press printing and 
bookbinding. (Pages 157-158.) 

The opinion of the inspectors is almost universally in favor of the total 
abolition of overwork as now practiced and understood. It is notorious 
that the great weight of opinion among employers is thrown into the same 
scale, their only stipulation being that the incidence of the law should be 
equal. (Page 338.) 

Factory Act Legislation. The Cobden Pri^e Essay for 1891. Victorine 
Jeans. London, T. Fisher Unwin, 1892. 

A resume of the work in London during the previous 10 years shows 
that the fears as to the effects of the Acts on the "season trades" were 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME UNNECESSARY 485 

unfounded. "You have come to ruin us," said a large manufacturer of great 

BRTTAIN 

artificial flowers to the inspector of 1867. A year afterward he acknowl- 
edged that the Factory Act was a positive blessing, that he got as much 
work out of his hands in 10>^ hours as in 12 or 14, and that he effected a 
saving of £30 on his gas-bill besides. Another declared in 1876 that he 
"considered the alteration a great improvement both to the men and to 
himself, there was a saving of gas, and a clear gain of time due to the fact 
that the workwomen were not so subject to fits, the result of over-ex- 
haustion." (Pages 76-77.) 

The Case for the Factory Acts. Edited by Mrs. Sidney Webb. London, 
Richard, 1901. 

No one who studies the actual working of the Factory Code can doubt 
that it will be perfected just in the measure in which all these differences 
are abolished and an equal adequacy of protection extended to all the 
places and all the persons who work. The ideal is that the regulations of 
all places in which manufacturing work for gain is carried on should ap- 
proximate as closely as possible to those which obtain in the most com- 
pletely guarded places, namely, the textile factories . . . the textile 
factory is cursed by no such overtime exception as elsewhere undermines 
the value of the hours' limitation. 

The overtime exception is doomed. Unless some unforeseen change in 
our industrial conditions revolutionizes the present order of things, the 
total abolition of overtime for women must follow on that for young per- 
sons, which was virtually accomplished by Mr. Asquith in 1895. . . . 
The case for abolition was as clearly proved as the complete consensus of 
opinion on the subject of those who work under the exception and those 
who have to enforce it could prove anything. The opinions of H. M. 
Inspectors of Factories and the opinions of the organized women workers 
were all but unanimous against allowing any overtime. These opinions, 
the expression of which dates back to the Royal Commission of 1875, are 
based on arguments which carry with them conviction on many grounds. 
Over and over again the view is stated that with better organization of the 
business the need for overtime disappears. Cases are quoted to prove 
that many large dressmaking and millinery firms never avail themselves 
of this exception, and the great object lesson of the textile trade is given. 
In all textile factories, and in a great many non-textile factories, to which 
no exception has been granted, organization and management quite 
easily cope with the recurring season pressure, and the trade automatically 
adapts itself to the law's requirements. In other non-textile factories 



486 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



and workshops, to which the overtime exception has been extended, de- 
mands no more urgent are met by the deliberate overtaxing of the work- 
ers' health and strength. (Pages 153-156.) 

In 1878, when this industry (fruit-preserving (jam-making) factories) 
was first brought under inspection, the employers protested against any 
regulation of the hours of labor, or even of sanitation, during the jam- 
making season, on the plea that the fruit had to be dealt with as it was 
delivered. The House of Commons, instead of insisting that the employ- 
ers should exert their brains so as to cope with difficulties inherent in 
their particular trade, weakly accepted their plea, and exempted them 
from the Common Rules enforced on other industries. What has been 
the result? The majority of BHtish jam factories at the beginning of the 
twentieth century present, during the summer months, scenes of over- 
work, overcrowding, dirt and disorder, hardly to be equalled by the cotton 
mills at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Women and young 
girls are kept continuously at work week-days and Sundays alike; often 
as much as a hundred hours in the seven days; and sometimes for twenty 
or even thirty hours at a stretch. (Pages 51-52.) 

... As if on purpose to complete the proof that these shortcomings 
are not inevitable in the business, and are merely the result of a disastrous 
exemption from regulation, we have the fact that, here and there, in 
different parts of the kingdom, a few firms stand out as preferring the 
"upward way"; scientifically organizing their supplies, providing cold 
storage, working their operatives only normal hours, and seeing to it 
that the work-places are clean and healthy. If the "downward way" 
were barred by law, as it is in cotton-spinning, all jam-making firms would 
long ago have been forced into the same course. (Page 53.) 



CANADA Report of Inspectors of Factories for the Province of Ontario, Canada. 1896. 

I consider the "overtime" system should be discouraged in all trades, 
even when extra work means extra pay, and there are some factories which 
have worked overtime without paying extra. 

Overtime is felt to be a hardship among most workers, and it is next to 
impossible to define the number of hours worked per day when that num- 
ber is being systematically exceeded. It is responsible for some of the 
idleness or only partial employment of a small number. It fosters a spirit 
of discontent in those who do not get the work. Irregularity of employ- 
ment is its inevitable result, and I am confident that much good would 
result from the reduction of occasions in which overtime may be worked, 
and also from the prohibition of it for young persons. (Page 22.) 



ALLOWANCE OF OVERTIME UNNECESSARY 487 

Report of Inspectors of Factories for the Province of Ontario, Canada. Canada 
1899. 

I have been struck with the frequently expressed opinion of em- 
ployers, as well as of employees, that overtime is injurious alike to the 
best interests of both. 1 share this view very strongly myself, and am 
convinced that the amount of overtime sanctioned under the Act is in 
excess of the necessities, and even of the desire of those who have the best 
claim for consideration on this question of overtime. (Pages 24-25.) 

New South fVales Legislative Assembly. 1903. Report of the Working of Australia 
the Factories and Shops Act. 

Every year's work shows more plainly the urgent necessity for amend- 
ing the Factories and Workshops Act of 1896, in the direction of giving 
more defmiteness to the provisions governing the length of the day's work 
and the strict guarding of overtime. (Page 11.) 

Jahreshericht der Grossheri'dglich Badischen Fahrikinspektion fiir das Jahr Germany 
1904. [Reports of the Factory Inspectors of Baden, 1904.] Carlsruhe, 
Thiergarten, 1905. 

Within the last year the employers proposed to an organization of 
workers that . . . the workmen should be legally permitted to work 
voluntarily beyond the legal hours. . . . The workers voted unanimously 
against the proposition and expressed themselves as fixedly opposed to 
"voluntary" overtime. 

They preferred keeping what they had won. Permission for "vol- 
untary" overtime would render all labor legislation illusory. For, as 
opposed to the power of employers, "voluntary overtime" would be an 
empty phrase, and if the employers wanted overtime work, such a con- 
tract would not be worth the paper it was written on. (Page 47.) 

Berichte iiher die Fahrikinspektion, 1882-1883. [Reports of the (Swiss) switzer- 
Factory Inspectors for 1882-1883.] Aarau, Sauerldnder, 1884. ^^^^ 

Overtime work is no longer so often regarded as a desirable thing as it 
used to be. I have a long list of statements by factory owners to the 
effect that active, industrious workers, out of consideration for their 
health, are unwilling to work overtime except in the most urgent emer- 
gencies . . . and that after 2 hours' overtime the employees are sleepy 
and indifferent. One employer, who with a specially lucrative rush order. 



SWITZER- 
LAND 



488 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



divided half of the profit with his workers in order to induce them to 
work overtime, found that most of them dropped out after four weeks. 

In an important industrial center a number of factory managers ex- 
pressed the opinion that overtime work "not only was a physical injury 
to the workers, but also destroyed pleasant relations between them and 
the employers, who were believed to profit unfairly by overtime." (Pages 
22-23.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of New York State Factory Inspector. 1889. 

In some cases the privilege of working overtime has been asked by the 
employees themselves, for the stated reason that the extra money earned 
would purchase some necessary of life which the money earned during 
regular working hours would not permit. However laudable this purpose 
may be, I cannot agree with the practice of crowding two days' work into 
one, for aside from its demoralizing effects, both mentally and physically, 
it is contrary to the principle which is gaining strength in the minds of 
many people, that the hours of labor should be still further reduced to at 
least less than ten per day. (Page 68.) 

Report of the New Jersey Inspector of Factories and IVorkshops. 1892. 

The protection to all women and young persons, both male and female, 
under eighteen, which this law (55-hour law) affords is unquestionably 
approved by public sentiment. . . . If, as is undoubtedly the case, it is 
necessary to operate some establishments for a longer time than fifty-five 
hours a week, or for other periods of time than those mentioned in the act, 
it certainly is not necessary that persons under eighteen years of age and 
females above that age should be employed in such operations, except 
within the periods limited thereby. (Page 13.) 



VI. THE REASONABLENESS OF THE CLASSIFI- 
CATIONS IN THE ACTS 

The fact that the Oregon Act of 1907 was confined in 
its application to mechanical establishments, factories, and 
laundries, was held not to be an arbitrary discrimination 
against the persons engaged in those employments. The 



laundries: character of the business 489 

experience of industrial communities shows clearly the 
special need of limiting the hours of labor of women in 
factories and workshops, and in many states and countries 
the prohibition of longer working hours is limited to such 
establishments. 

The specific inclusion of other occupations is not an ar- 
bitrary discrimination against those occupations such as the 
telephone or telegraph service, millinery or dressmaking es- 
tablishments, or restaurants, enumerated in the Ohio Act 
of 1911; or mercantile establishments, hotels, restaurants, 
telegraph or telephone service, or common carriers enumer- 
ated, among other places of employment, in the Illinois Act 
of 1911. The special dangers of long hours in these estab- 
lishments, as they are conducted, present strong reasons for 
providing a legal limitation of the hours of work in these 
businesses. 

A. Laundries 

(1) Present Character of the Business 

Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, Medical Expert on Dangerous g^^j. 
Trades Committee of the Home Office. Chapter XLVII. Laundry 
Workers. London, Murray, 1902. 

It is perhaps difficult to realize that the radical change which has 
everywhere transformed industrial conditions has already affected this 
occupation (laundry work) also. . . . When the first washing machine 
and ironing roller were applied to this occupation, alteration in the condi- 
tions became as much a foregone conclusion as it did in the case of the 
textile or the clothing manufactures, when the spinning frame, the power 
loom, or the sewing machine appeared. 

Meanwhile, few industries afford at the present time a more interesting 
study. From a simple home occupation it is steadily being transformed 
by the application of power-driven machinery and by the division of 
labor into a highly organized factory industry, in which complicated labor- 
saving contrivances of all kinds play a prominent part. (Pages 661-662.) 

The manufacture of laundry machinery, to which much energy and 
capital is devoted, is every year increasing. New and ingenious inven- 



490 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



tions and improvements constantly appear, many of which come from 
America, whence a considerable amount of this machinery is imported. 
(Page 665.) 

This work is not the light and often pleasant occupation of sewing or 
folding. It is not done sitting down. From morning to night these 
young girls are constantly standing; they are generally tending machines, 
the majority of which are specially heated, and they work in an atmosphere 
in which steam, which is nearly always present, makes the high tempera- 
ture far more oppressive than would be the case if the air were not thus 
artificially saturated to an excessive degree with moisture. Steam rises 
from the calenders and various machines. It is given off also by the 
damp clothes, which in many laundries, even large ones, hang drying or 
airing overhead or on "horses" in the room. The conditions in this re- 
spect are often at least as trying as in any spinning-mill, and the hours 
during which the girls are exposed to them verv much longer. (Page 
670.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



Colorado. Third Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1891- 
1892. Part II. Female IV age- Earners. 

In some laundries the hours of employment during the rush frequently 
extend to eleven and twelve hours per day, although no extra compensa- 
tion is paid to female employees, with but few exceptions. . . . While 
machinery to a large extent relieves her (the female laundry worker) of 
much work, the full strength of her physical endurance is taxed by a 
tedious attention to the duties assigned her. (Page 28.) 

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. 
Vol. XII. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2nd Session. 
1911. 

Three hundred and fifteen laundries were visited in Chicago, New 
York, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. These laundries employed a total of 
6417 persons, 5142 or 80.1 per cent of whom were women. (Pages 9-10.) 



HOURS OF WORK IN LAUNDRIES 

Inquiry in regard to the hours of labor in laundries was made in all the 
laundries visited, and a detailed study of the hours of labor was made in a 
number of representative laundries in Chicago. A comparison of the 
working hours in all of the laundries visited with those in the Chicago 
laundries, where special inquiry was made, shows that practically the 



laundries: character of the business 491 

same conditions as to hours of work prevail in all of them with but few united 

STAT&S 

exceptions. While the weekly hours of work are in but few cases long 
when compared with other industries, the practice of extending the work- 
ing hours on one or two days of the week is not uncommon, days of 12, 
13, or even 14 hours being reported elsewhere as well as in Chicago. 
(Page 15.) 

Thirty-seven per cent of the girls reported working longer hours than 
those given as normal by the managers of the laundries in which such girls 
were employed. Moreover, women not employed in such laundries at 
the time of the interview, but formerly at work there, told the agents of 
the Bureau that there were one or two days nearly every week in the year, 
prior to the validation of the Illinois 10-hour law, when the girls had to 
work more than 10 and sometimes as many as 14 hours a day to get out 
the rush orders. (Pages 16-17.) 

CHARACTER OF THE WORK IN POWER LAUNDRIES, BY OCCUPATIONS 

In the motor laundries the nature of the work performed by the women 
requires explanation before the importance of good laundry conditions 
can be appreciated. The principal occupations for women are, in the 
order of the work, listing, marking, sorting, hand washing, shaking, man- 
gling, folding, starching, machine ironing, hand ironing, finishing, mend- 
ing, and wrapping. 

The operation of washing machines is now almost entirely confined to 
men. . . . 

Before the pieces are ready for the ironing process, however, they must 
be straightened out from the tangled mass in which they leave the ex- 
tractor. They are sent to the mangle floor and are shaken up in an empty 
wheel for the purpose, or are taken up by girls who are called shakers, 
who pick up the pieces one by one, snap or shake them violently, lay them 
down in neat piles or fold and lay them on horses which are passed to the 
operators of the mangle, who stand on an elevated platform for the feed- 
ing work. The younger girls are usually employed as shakers and can do 
the work only when standing. The work involves a steady use of the 
arms and more or less stooping and reaching, so that many girls acquire a 
constant motion of the body as well as of the arms. The muscles are 
under constant strain continued throughout the day in rooms where the 
temperature is high and the air full of moisture. 

The mangle is a huge piece of machinery consisting of a number of 
hollow iron cylinders which revolve. Steam pipes or electric wires lead 
into the central or larger cylinder and it is heated to the required tempera- 
ture. The smaller rolls which are placed on all sides of the upper part of 



492 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED the central cylinder are wrapped with many folds of felt material. These 

STATES 

also are revolved by the motor and heating power, and form the touching 
surface through which the goods pass. The work is fed in at one side of 
the machine and after getting the many ironings which a course through a 
mangle insures, comes out at the other side steaming, but perfectly smooth 
and ready to be folded and packed. The feeders on the mangle stand at 
their work, which does not require much skill, and after once learned is 
not, save for the constant standing, fatiguing. 

The mangles are sometimes guarded by a large roll, which is placed 
upon the carrier apron immediately in front of the heated roll and keeps 
the fingers from coming in contact with the heat, or from being crushed by 
the heavy cylinder rolls. This is a most effective guard. Another guard 
consisting of a frame with strings stretching across is sometimes used. 
Sometimes, unfortunately, no guard is used. (Pages 19-20.) 

The process of starching is always done by women. In some laundries 
it is still entirely a hand process, but in others it has been much improved 
by the introduction of machinery. Though the bulk of the work can now 
be done by this improved method, a measure of handwork remains. In 
hand starching the girls stand at tables with the starch mixture in basins 
before them. Each article is stretched out and the starch rubbed into it. 
Thus, in addition to the standing, the movements of the arms and the 
necessary strain on the muscles are fatiguing, and the continued exertion 
tends to exhaust the worker. If starching is done in the ironing rooms, as 
is frequently the case, the effects of the heat and the work are especially 
severe during the summer months. One forewoman in a large laundry 
said that before the starching was done in a separate room the girls em- 
ployed at this occupation suffered from the heat, were forced to apply cold 
and wet cloths to their heads, and sometimes fainted. Where space is 
ample a separate room is provided and the heat is less intense. (Page 
21.) 

The heaviest machines used for ironing shirts are called body ironers, 
but might be described as small mangles. The main part of the machine 
consists of two iron cylinders, one of which is heated from the inside by 
gas, the other covered with a thick pad of felt and cotton cloth. These 
pads are much thicker than those on the machines for ironing collars. 
The rolls on each machine stand apart until the body of the garment has 
been adjusted by passing it over the end of one roll instead of putting it 
in laterally as in the case of the large mangle. Then the operator presses 
a lever with her foot. This swings one roll into contact with the other 
and gives the pressure. The lever is held down by the foot, and this re- 
quires the weight of the body, while the hands direct the work. 



laundries: bad effect on health 493 

The ordinary process of machine ironing requires the constant use of united 
the lever, which is operated by the same foot continually. In case certain 
reverse movements are necessary a second lever operated by the other 
foot is used. The occupation of ironing is without doubt excessively 
fatiguing labor. The women can not sit while doing the work. The 
machines are so arranged that the operators can stand upright at their 
work, but many women are accustomed to sway the body with every 
motion of the hands or feet. In some laundries the women have wooden 
boxes to stand on, so that in using the foot lever they step down upon it 
instead of having to step up on the lever and then force it down with the 
weight of the body. This is decidedly easier and not so trying on the 
feet. The women who use these levers usually wear old soft shoes or no 
shoes at all while at work. There is a great difference in the weight re- 
quired to operate the different machines in use. The latest, most im- 
proved machines with the reversible levers are much easier to run than 
the older and heavier machines. One employer, in explaining to the 
agent of the bureau the difference in the weight required to operate the 
different machines in use, stated that the old machines "would tear a 
woman to pieces in a few years if constantly used." He was replacing the 
old machines with new and improved ones at the time, but in other 
laundries a very large number of the old machines are still used. • As 
long as they do their work a laundryman hesitates to go to the expense of 
replacing them with new and expensive ones. 

The machines radiate an excessive heat, and this combination of heat 
and tiresome movements of arms and body works great discomfort to 
the operator. In addition to the muscular strain the women must be 
constantly on guard to prevent getting their fingers caught between the 
rolls. An accident was witnessed where the girl was talking to another 
behind her and carelessly caught her fingers between the cylinders of the 
body ironer, forgetting in her fright that her foot was on the lever which 
produced the pressure. Her fingers were held long enough to be severely 
burned. (Pages 22-24.) 



(2) Bad Effect on Health 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector great 
of Factories and Workshops. 

The whole work of a laundry is done standing, and the practice of so 
apportioning the legal "sixty hours a week" that on three or four days in 



# 



BRITAm 



494 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



the week the women have to work from 8 a. m. to 10 or 11 at night — a 
practice which could be, and where there is proper organization often is, 
rendered needless — has its natural result in the form of disease to which 
laundry workers are extremely liable. It is well known that they suffer 
much from varicose veins, and terrible ulcers on the legs; but the extra- 
ordinary extent to which they are so afflicted is, I think, not generally 
known. In many other trades standing is a necessary condition, and it is 
difficult to account for the far greater prevalence of this disease among 
laundry workers than among others of the same class engaged in ordinary 
factory occupations, except on the ground of the long and irregular hours. 
(Page 383.) 

With a view to arriving, if possible, at some definite knowledge of the 
position of laundry workers as compared with other women of their class 
and situation, in regard to the question of health, I have this year devoted 
some time to inquiring into the subject in the districts under my charge 
and in neighbouring localities. . . . By the kindness of the superintendents 
of the two first infirmaries (Islesworth, and Wandsworth and Clapham) I 
have been able to examine the carefully kept records of the number, ages, 
occupations, and diseases of the patients. The following tables, compiled 
from these records, speak for themselves, and afford some indication of the 
kinds of disease to which laundry workers appear to be particularly liable. 
(Pages 383-384.) 



Table A. Islesworth Infirmary 
(Includes Acton, Chiswick, Brentford — A typical laundry district) 





Number 


Suffering 

from 
Ulcers on 
the Legs 


Propor- 
tion 


Phthisis 


Propor- 
tion 


1908 
Laundresses 


58 
179 

79 

218 


9 

7 

13 

7 


1 in 6 

lin25 

lin 6 
lin31 


6 

7 

9 
11 


lin 10 


Women, other than laun- 
dresses 

1899 

Laundresses 

Women, other than laun- 
dresses ... . 


1 in 25 

lin 9 
lin 20 







laundries: bad effect on health 

Table B. Wandsworth and Clapham Infirmary 
(Includes Battersea — another laundry district) 



495 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 





Num- 


Ulcers 


Pro- 


Rheu- 


Pro- 


Bron- 


Pro- 


Phthi- 


Pro- 




ber 


on the 
Legs 


portion 


ma- 
tism 


portion 


chitis 


por- 
tion 


sis 


portion 


1899 


















Laundresses 


247 


36 


lin 6 


16 


lin 16 


45 


lin 5 


21 


lin 11 


Women, 




















other than 




















laundresses. 


1171 


50 


lin23 


49 


lin 22 


129 


lin 9 


63 


lin 19 


1900 




















Laundresses 


199 


27 


lin 7 


12 


lin 16 


21 


lin 9 


18 


lin 11 


Women, 




















other than 




















laundresses. 


1127 


41 


lin 27 


69 


lin 16 


133 


lin 9 


59 


lin 19 



At the Fulham and Hammersmith Infirmary about the same proportions 
exist, but it was not so easy to collect accurate statistics. . . . The figures 
supplied by the records of the cases attended by the Kensington District 
Nursing Association show a large proportion of ulcerated legs and of forms 
of internal disease aggravated by standing for long hours. (Page 384.) 

I was struck by the absence of any particular liability to skin disease 
. . . noticed . . . some years ago, but . . . since almost disappeared. 
The immensely increased use of machinery in the process of washing . . . 
may account for this difference. 

The constant exposure to steam, standing on wet floors, the great 
heat in which the work is carried on, and the long hours at exhausting 
work, amply explains the tendency to pulmonary disease. The badly 
arranged floors in large wash-houses are a constant source of discomfort 
and probably of ill-health to the workers. . . . It is not uncommon to 
find that the yellow and foul water from a row of tanks or washing ma- 
chines at one side of a wash-house flows all across the floor and over the 
feet of the workers before eventually reaching the drain. (Page 385.) 

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. HJIISP 
Vol. XII. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2nd Session. 1911. 

EFFECT OF LAUNDRY WORK UPON HEALTH FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF A 
PHYSICIAN OF EXPERIENCE WITH LAUNDRY WORKERS 

In the bleaching processes to which household linen is subjected in the 
laundry, acrid and caustic chemicals are employed, such as chloride of 



496 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED lime, carbonate of soda, etc. If handled in a dry state these cause intense 

STATES 

itching and eczematous eruptions of the skin. When vaporized after 
solution, or in gaseous form, they irritate the eyes and the whole respira- 
tory tract, occasioning conjunctivitis and giving rise to catarrhal inflam- 
mation of the throat and bronchial tubes. 

Hand ironers, using the old-fashioned flatirons, are peculiarly liable to 
synovitis of the extensor muscles of the right fore arm. This inflamma- 
tion impairs the motility of the wrist and excites pains of a rheumatic 
character. 

Parsesthesia of the fmger tips is a common affliction of both hand 
ironers and hand starchers. Its symptoms are numbness, tingling, and 
formication in the fingers which often extend to the arms. 

Many hand ironers bend over their work and press with their bodies, 
at a point just below the ensiform cartilage, upon the handle of the flat- 
iron, as carpenters do sometimes against a bitstock. This is a most 
pernicious practice, and may occasion gastric ulcer and other diseases of 
the stomach. 

The operators of body ironers frequently suffer from displacement of 
the left kidney (enteroptosis). The trouble is caused by constant use of 
the foot lever. Operators of these machines should wear abdominal 
supporters as a preventive measure. 

A very prevalent deformity among washers and ironers is flatfoot, 
which results from their continual standing. It occasions pains resem- 
bling and sometimes mistaken for those of rheumatism. 

Varicosities of the veins of the lower extremities are common in all 
occupations that necessitate a continual standing posture; hence washers, 
starchers, and ironers often have dilated veins which need the support of 
elastic stockings. 

In many laundries the mangle cylinders are not provided with guards of 
any description. As an inevitable consequence of this negligence hands 
and fingers are burned or crushed. 

Though not peculiar to them, chlorosis is perhaps the commonest ail- 
ment of laundresses. And although the data presented in this series of 
cases are not sufficiently full and definite to afi'ord the basis for a positive 
differential diagnosis, the syndrome of symptoms (anemia, shortness of 
breath, debility, etc.) in many instances justifies a provisional and tenta- 
tive conjecture in favor of the existence of this affection. The condition 
is due chiefly to unwholesome environment. 

The relative rarity of tuberculosis among laundry workers deserves 
special study. For, though the comparative immunity to phthisis of 
employees in this industry is generally accepted as a fact, no investiga- 



laundries: bad effect on health 497 

tion, so far as the writer is aware, has ever been undertaken with the view united 
of verifying or correcting the opinion, or of ascertaining the cause of the states 
exemption, if it really exists. (Pages 25-26.) 



Making Both Ends Meet The Income and Outlay of New York Working 
Girls. S. A. Clarke and Edith Wyatt. New York, Macmillan, 
1911. 

Although the labor at the machines in the laundry washrooms is done 
by men, and all work in laundries consists largely of machine tending, 
still women's part in the industry can be performed only by unusually 
strong women. Its severity may be indicated by an account of the work a 
machine ironer in Illinois regularly performed before the passage of the 
Illinois Ten-Hour Law. Miss Radway used to iron five hundred shirt 
bosoms a day. Holding the loose part of the shirt up above her head to 
prevent the muslin from being caught in the iron, she pressed the bosom 
in a machine manipulated by three heavy treads — by bearing all of her 
weight on her right foot stamping down on a pedal to the right; then by 
bearing all her weight on her left foot, stamping down a pedal to the left; 
then by pressing down both pedals with a jump. To iron five hundred 
shirt bosoms required three thousand treads a day. (Pages 179-180.) 

I found some steam laundries in which no work at all is done on Monday 
or Saturday, but in the busy season the place keeps running regularly on 
the other four days from seven in the morning till half past eleven and 
twelve at night. (Page 190.) 

After standing ten or twelve hours, there are few whose feet or backs do 
not ache. The effect on the feet is perhaps the chief ground of complaint. 
Some merely wear rags about their feet, others put on old shoes or slippers, 
which they slit up in front and at the sides. The girls who press skirts 
by machine and those who do the body ironing have to press down on 
pedals in order to accomplish their tasks, and find this, as a rule, harder 
than standing still. (Page 192.) 

The low wages and long hours of the great majority of the women 
workers, the gradual breaking and loss of the normal health of many lives 
through under-nourishment and physical strain, are, in my judgment, 
the most serious dangers in the laundries. The loss of a finger, the maim- 
ing of a hand, even the mutilation of the poor girl who lost the use of both 
of her hands — the occasional casualties for a few girls in the laundries — 
are, though so much more salient, far less grave than the exhaustion and 
underpayment of the many. (Pages 196-197.) 

32* 



498 fatigue and efficiency 

(3) Bad Effect on Safety 

GREAT British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1904. Re-port of the Chief Inspector 

BRITAIN ^j Factories and Workshops. 

The comparative immunity from, accidents in the laundries in the West 
Riding of Yorkshire may be possibly due in some measure to the moderate 
hours of employment. (Page 210.) 

The incidents of accidents according to time of day is somewhat sur- 
prising, the most dangerous hours apparently being 11 a. m. to 12 noon 
and 4 to 6 p. M. . . . Probably 11 a. m. to 12 noon is more generally than 
any other time the last tiring hour of a five hours' spell; 4-6 p. m. covers 
the time when most generally the transition from daylight to artificial 
light takes place. (Page 211.) 

Reference was also made (in the Thirteenth International Congress of 
Hygiene), although figures were not adduced, to the alleged increase in 
the number of accidents which occur late in the working day when the 
effect of intellectual and physical fatigue have made themselves apparent. 
(Page 298.) 



(4) Bad Effect on Morals 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. X. 1901. Report of the Chief Inspector 
of Factories and Workshops. 

One of the most unsatisfactory results of the present system or lack 
of system of working hours in laundries is the unfortunate moral effect 
on the women and girls of this irregularity. The difficulty of securing 
steady regular work from employees and of insuring punctual attendance 
is complained of on all sides, and the more intelligent employers are be- 
ginning to see that this is the natural result of the irregularity in working 
hours, which is still too readily fostered by many who do not realize its 
mischievous effect. Women who are employed at arduous work till far 
into the night are not likely to be early risers nor given to punctual at- 
tendance in the mornings, and workers who on one or two days in the 
week are dismissed to idleness or to other occupations, while on the re- 
maining days they are expected to work for abnormally long hours, are 
not rendered methodical, industrious, or dependable workers by such an 
unsatisfactory training. The self-control and good habits engendered by 
a regular and definite period of moderate daily employment, which affords 
an excellent training for the young worker in all organized industries, is 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS 499 

sadly lacking, and, instead, one finds periods of violent over-work alter- great 
nating with hours of exhaustion. The result is the establishment of a ^^^"^-^^n 
kind of "vicious circle"; bad habits among workers make compliance by 
their employers with any regulation as to hours very difficult. (Page 385.) 

Dangerous Trades. Thomas Oliver, M.D., Medical Expert on Dangerous 
Trades Committee oj the Home Office. London, John Murray, 1902. 

The ten minutes or quarter-hour "lunch" of "beer" is common, and 
the "beer-man" who goes his rounds at 10 a. m. and 6 or 7 p. m. to all 
the laundries, delivering his cans of beer from the nearest public house, is 
an institution which is, I believe, unknown in any other trade. Imagine 
the amazement of the master of a mill or weaving factory if his employees 
were to stop in a body for a quarter of an hour twice a day between meals 
to drink beer! Yet in many laundries the beer is kept on the premises for 
the purpose, and it is certain that as long as time thus wasted (to put it 
on the lowest grounds) can be made up by each separate woman "working 
it out" at the end of the day, irregular dawdling and intemperate habits 
will be encouraged. On the other hand, a woman who is expected on 
Thursdays or Fridays to be in the laundry from 8 or 8.30 in the morning 
till 9 or 10 or 11 at night may claim with some show of reason that only by 
some kind of spur can she keep her over-tired body from flagging. (Page 
672.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1903. Report oj the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

The work of endeavouring to administer the regulation as to period of 
employment in (laundries) is extremely disheartening. When work is 
carried on in spurts, the shamefully long hours, straining endurance to the 
utmost, alternating with days of idleness, the worker cannot be expected 
to develop any qualities but those of the casual labourer. (Page 174.) 



B. Mercantile Establishments 

(1) Hours of Labor in Illinois Mercantile Establishments* 

Official government investigations show that without a 
legal limitation of hours, the daily hours of labor in Chicago 

* This section was part of the Brief in defense of the Illinois Act of 1911; 
hence the hours of labor in Illinois are quoted. They are typical of all large cities, 
as well as of Chicago. 



500 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

mercantile establishments were in many cases so long as to 
be dangerous to the health of the girls and women employed 
therein. 

(a) Before the ten-hour law was extended to include mercan- 
tile establishments, the day's work often exceeded ten hours. 

Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United 
States. Vol. V. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2d Ses- 
sion. 1910. 

All of the fifty-four women employes in Chicago mercantile establish- 
ments interviewed on the subject of overtime, reported their longest 
days as more than ten hours. Twenty-nine reported the longest day as 
more than twelve, and the average for the fifty-four was 12.8 hours, with 
" a range of UK to fifteen hours. The normal hours per week for the fifty- 
four women averaged approximately 53.8, and their normal earnings 
$7.51 a week. The average age was 26.7 years. Twenty-nine of fifty- 
four women reported overtime work during the year, exclusive of De- 
cember, 1907, for 2.4 hours on an average of 3.7 days for each week during 
an average period of thirty-four weeks. (Page 209.) 

The indications are strong enough to warrant the conclusion that over- 
time runs to dangerous limits in mercantile establishments in the absence 
of restrictive laws setting definitely a limit to the hours of labor per day 
and per week. (Page 215.) 

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor. No. 91. November, 1910. Work- 
ing Hours of Wage-Earning Women in Chicago. 

The hours of work here recorded are for women working in the neigh- 
borhood department and small retail dry-goods stores of Chicago. Such 
stores are located in districts several miles to the south, west, and north 
of the large department stores on State street. (Page 891.) 

Basing the estimate on the number of women employed in the estab- 
lishments covered by this report and the number of listed firms of similar 
character and size, there are approximately 10,000 saleswomen in the 
neighborhood department and retail dry-goods stores of Chicago. In 
other words, about two-fifths of Chicago's retail-store women work under 
conditions differing materially from the conditions surrounding the 15,000 
women employed in the downtown department stores. 

The normal hours of work per day and per week and the hours during 
the busy season in each of the eleven stores included in the investigation 
are shown in the following table: 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS 



501 



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Number 
of Hours 
Day 
before 
Christ- 
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Number 
of Hours 
First 
Week 
before 
Christ- 
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Number 
of Hours 
Second 
Week 
before 
Christ- 
mas 






Dura- 
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in 
Weeks 


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Total 
Hours 

Week 


00Or00\OiO0N0v0N'<-<O 


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Number of 
Women Employed 


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Under 

16 
Years 


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16 
Years 
and 
Over 


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UNITED 
STATES 









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502 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

The total number of women 16 years of age and over employed in the 
eleven representative neighborhood stores covered by the investigation 
was 618, or approximately 6 per cent of the adult women employes in the 
neighborhood department and other retail stores of Chicago. (Pages 
892-893.) 

Of these 618, 100, or about 16 per cent, were personally interviewed 
on the subject of working hours during fhe level of business of 1909 and 
1910 and during the rush periods of 1909. They are all women who have 
been working in stores at least since the early part of 1909, and could, 
therefore, give information for that year. Many of them are women of 
long experience in the business, who began working at the age of 14 or 
even younger. 

The neighborhood department store may be called a modern depart- 
ment store on a small scale or a large old-fashioned general merchandise 
store. It supplies every want of the families in the neighborhood from 
groceries and furniture to evening dresses and tailor-made suits. (Page 
893.) 

The normal hours as given in the tabulation for the establishments are 
strictly true for four of the stores. For the other seven stores the hours 
as reported are only approximately correct, as the individual employes 
interviewed reported longer hours in almost every case. This is explained 
by the fact that on the nights when the stores remain open the doors are 
open until the last customer has gone, even though this may be some 
time after the nominal closing hour. Thus in one store that was sup- 
posed to close at 9.00 p. m. on Thursday night no one ever got away 
before 9.05 and many could not leave before 9.30 p. m. The Saturday 
night closing hour is very elastic. Some stores that are supposed to 
close at 10.00 p. m. are open any time from 10.30 p. m. to 11.00 p. m. and 
even later. 

In the case of establishment No. 6, the manager reported the hours as 
given, saying the girls did not go to work until 9.00 a. m. and did not 
work on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday evenings. Later this store 
was visited on evenings when it was reported as closed, and not only was 
the store open, but the very girls who said they did not work on the even- 
ings named were found selling goods. They were also seen going to work 
at 8.00 A. M. instead of 9.00 a. m. It was not possible to talk to the girls 
alone, for the manager followed the agent around whenever such an 
attempt was made. Thus, sixty-seven hours a week would be more 
truthful than fifty-five hours. The latter probably shows more nearly 
what could be done to shorten hours than what is done. (Page 895.) 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS 503 

(b) The longest hours prevailed during the Christmas 
rush precisely when the work was most severe and exhausting. 

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor. No. 91. November, 1910, H^ork- UNITED 

STAT&S 

ing Hours of Wage-Earning Women in Chicago. 

However, in spite of the strain of long hours on half of the days of the 
year, the greatest strain occurs during the stores' busy season in December. 
This lasts from one to two weeks before Christmas each year — in the 
largest number of stores two full weeks before Christmas Day. The only 
exception to this rule was the ten weeks reported by a cloak and suit 
store (establishment No. 6). Four of these ten weeks were before Christ- 
mas and six before Easter. During the holiday busy season the stores 
remain open every night in the week from 9.00 to 11.00 o'clock, depending 
on the customers. On Christmas Eve the closing hour was even later. 
The hours reported by the managers for these two weeks are very conserva- 
tive statements of the case. They may have desired to close at the time 
they reported, but the doors were not closed or the lights turned out, and 
the saleswomen had to remain and serve customers until 9.30, 10.00, and 
10.30 every evening the first week, and until 10.00, 10.30, 11.00, 11.30, 
12.00, and even 1.00 o'clock every evening the week before Christmas. 
Some could leave earlier than others, for whenever business ceased in a 
department the girls were allowed to go. A study of the hours reported 
by individuals will give a fair idea of the strain of those two weeks. Thus, 
thirty-two out of the 100, or almost one-third of the individuals, reported 
eighty hours or more for the week before Christmas. Only one of the 
thirty-two had worked less than seventy-two and one-half hours the week 
before that. One saleswoman at a bargain table reported seventy-six 
and one-half hours the second week before Christmas and eighty-six and 
one-half hours the week before. The culmination of the strain ended 
Christmas Eve with a thirteen-hour day. None of these girls worked less 
than thirteen hours the day before Christmas and one reported working 
fourteen and three-fourths hours. Fifty-six more of these saleswomen, 
or eighty-eight out of the 100, worked more than seventy hours the week 
before Christmas, and only twenty-two of these had less than seventy 
hours the week before that. Out of the 100, twelve reported working 
only between sixty and seventy hours these two weeks. Of the 100, 
twenty girls worked fourteen hours or more the day before Christmas, 
thirty-nine more, or fifty-nine out of the 100, worked thirteen hours or 
more the day before Christmas. Only five worked less than twelve hours 
on this day, and two of these were in a store owned by Hebrews who closed 



504 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

at 5.00 o'clock on Friday, since Christmas happened to fall on Saturday in 
1909. (Pages 896-897.) 



Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United 
States. Vol. V. Chap. V. Wage-Earning Women in Chicago.* 
Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2d Session. 1910. 

In addition to the regular hours of work, nearly all women are required 
to do "overtime work" in busy seasons, such as Christmas, before special 
sales in their departments, and when inventory is taken. A woman in 
charge of the section may have to remain frequently after the store is 
closed. ... In 60 per cent of the cases, however, the "overtime work" 
is done within a period of from one to three weeks before Christmas. 
Some of the stores are open every night (except Sunday night) from ten 
^days to two weeks before the holidays. In these stores the girls generally 
work at night for a week to prepare for the rush. In cases where the girls 
remain until 10.30 p. m., 11.00 p. m., or midnight, an effort is sometimes 
made to relieve the strain by allowing them to report from one-half hour 
to one and one-half hours late the next day. This does not always hap- 
pen, however. Even in the stores that are closed to patrons after 5.30 
p. M. the girls do overtime work at this season. (Page 110.) 



Ihid. Chap. XI. Overtime and Nightwork of Wage-Earning Women. 

Forty-six of the fifty-four women employes in Chicago mercantile 
establishments worked overtime in December, 1907, for an average of 
11.2 days before Christmas; five of them received definite compensation, 
averaging $3.20 each for the 11.2 days; ten were paid a commission on 
all December sales as compensation for overtime; twelve were given supper 
or supper money only; and nineteen received nothing at all for the Christ- 
mas overtime work. 

As has been said, nothing in this condition was illegal in Illinois at 
the time of this investigation. (Page 210.) 

In general, it can be said that long hours for women are rarely found 
under more unfavorable conditions than in stores that keep open evenings 
during the holiday season and, to a less degree, in the stores keeping open 
Saturday nights. (Page 214.) 

* Number of women included in investigation of department and other retail 
stores, 339. 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS AND FACTORIES 505 

Report of the Consumers' League of the City of New York for the Year 1908. united 

STAT£S 

The most important work of the Committee on Investigation has been 
its attempt to cope with the evil of excessive overtime work during the 
season preceding Christmas, when the daily strain put upon employes is 
greatest. 

As the claim has often been made that evening opening was necessitated 
by the demand of busy working people who could not buy in the day- 
time, it was decided to make this year a more expanded investigation 
of the evening conditions. . . . Three hundred such investigations were 
made, and, as the weather was fine, it gave a full impression of the 
"demand." 

Testimony was unanimous that on the first open evening there were 
no crowds in the stores, and that on the evening when the stores were 
crowded a very large proportion of persons were not buying. . . . When 
it is realized that this extra time in the evening follows the most congested 
time of the year's selling, and that the special sales begin on December 
26th, allowing no let-up in the strain, it will be seen that the health of 
employes is unwarrantably jeopardized. (Page 30.) 



(2) Nature of the Work: Comparison with Factory Work 

The nature of the work in mercantile establishments is 
comparable to work in factories, and the strain of the employ- 
ment is analogous to the strain of factory work. The long 
hours of standing behind the counter and the bad air common 
to most stores, are the worst physical hardships. The strain 
of machine work in factories is replaced in stores by the 
strain of constant intercourse with customers, together with 
the effort to keep up the amount of her sales, upon which 
the salesgirl's tenure of work usually depends. 

The legal prohibition of excessive working hours is there- 
fore as necessary for women employed in stores as for women 
employed in factories, and the benefits which have been 
secured for the former may reasonably be expected to accrue 
also from the prohibition of more than ten hours' work in one 
day in mercantile establishments. 



506 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Report on Coyidition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. 
Vol. V. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2d Session. 
1910. 

A saleswoman is in constant contact with people, obliged to please not 
only the customer, but the buyer, the assistant buyer, and the floor- 
walkers. As a buyer, she must give closest attention to details as well 
as to the matter of general supervision. All these causes may have over- 
strained her nervous force, and at this point it is not uncommon to hear 
of nervous breakdowns. The case of Mrs. F. is an illustration: After 
eight years' experience as an energetic and pushing saleswoman she was 
promoted to the rank of buyer. She was unusually successful, but after 
a few years the intense strain proved too great, and at the age of about 33 
years nervous prostration necessitated a three-years' rest. At the expira- 
tion of this period she returned to work, but was obliged to take a place 
" among the rank and file as saleswoman. She is now earning a salary of 
^12.00 a week. (Page 43.) 

The wage of a saleswoman is determined, primarily, by the amount of 
her sales, which are carefully watched by the buyer, and if the sales of 
one fall below those of her neighbor she is told that she must sell more 
goods or "we shall have to fill your place with some other clerk." The 
saleswoman is in this way constantly nerved to highest endeavor, for not 
only does failure to sell mean loss of promotion, but she must keep up to 
the standard to maintain her present rank and wage. (Page 44.) 

The Illinois statutes contain a law requiring employers to provide 
seats for women employes. Many of the department store employers 
obey this law to the letter. They provide seats. But the seat does not 
help a woman much unless she is allowed to use it. Most of the women 
say that they are closely watched, and are reprimanded by the floorman 
of their section if they sit down, even though they are not busy. Occa- 
sionally one hears of a floorman who proved an exception to the rule. 
(Page 109.) 



Ihid. Vol. IX. History of Women in Industry in the United States. 

The hours of saleswomen, too, though they have been gradually short- 
ened, have always been long, and it soon became evident that the constant 
standing, which had been required of men, was injurious to women. 
Other evils, too, appeared. The history of saleswomen, then, like the 
history of other classes of working women, early becomes a story of hard 
work, long hours, and low wages. (Page 236.) 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS AND FACTORIES 507 

It was suggested that the constant standing position was probably as united 
injurious as the use of the sewing machine. (Page 238.) 

Report of the Consumers' League of the City of New York for the Year 1895. 

Consider what it means to be on one's feet from ten to fourteen hours 
a day, in a crowded space, shoved and pushed about, lifting heavy boxes 
at times, waiting on impatient customers and customers who wish to be 
helped to know their own minds, keeping accounts of sales and stocks, 
taking addresses — often given hurriedly and carelessly, fined in many 
instances if they were written down incorrectly, and all this for salaries 
ranging from three to eight dollars a week, and obliged to dress neatly 
and fairly well, and to pay out of it for one's meals, lodging, washing, 
clothing, and carfare. (Page 17.) 



Report and Testimony Taken Before the Special {Reinhard) Committee 
of the Assembly Appointed to Investigate the Condition of Female 
Labor in the City of New York. January 16, 1896. 

Witness, Dr. Mary Putnam Jacobi: 

It seems to me that the gist of the matter lies in one question, and that 
rs, "Does the condition of the employes in retail stores at the present 
moment approximate or become identical with that of employes in fac- 
tories?" That is the whole question. Because the question of the neces- 
sity of factory inspectors, and the necessity of some control outside of the 
factories, to protect the interests of the factory operatives has been de- 
cided, after nearly a century by the unanimous opinion of people who have 
tried the experiment. This question first received attention in 1802 in 
England, and we know it is only by means of the factory legislation that 
has been enacted and carried on and reinforced in England that the pop- 
ulation of England has been arrested on the down-grade slope of deteriora- 
tion that threatened the very existence of the English nation. We know 
that most of the most enlightened states in the United States have fol- 
lowed in the track of the English legislation. 

The second point is that the physical health of the women and children 
is of immense importance — not merely to themselves and family, but to 
the community at large. It is a social matter, and if the health of thou- 
sands and millions of women and children are allowed to deteriorate, why 
the whole nation suffers. It is on these two principles, which are perfectly 
obvious, that the factory legislation has been initiated for operatives in 
factories, and it seems to me perfectly evident as soon as any one stops to 



508 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

consider that this same principle applies to the workers in retail stores. 
This development of the employment of women and children in stores is 
a very recent and modern thing. 

We, therefore, ask you to report this bill, which extends to the mer- 
cantile establishments where women and children are employed the 
principles which have been decided and accepted in spite of the opposition 
of the employers in mills and factories, and which are now recognized as 
necessary for the welfare of the community. (Page 764.) 

Women and the Trades. Elizabeth B. Butler. The Pittsburgh Survey. 
Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publica- 
tion Committee, 1909. 

The dead air that tires the casual shopper weighs unrelieved on brain 
and nerves of the salesgirl who must breathe it the day through. . . . Since 
adequate ventilation is as yet only half insisted upon in churches and 
courts and schools, we can perhaps be tolerant of the backwardness 
hitherto of stores in this respect. Yet we can scarcely continue to be so 
indefinitely. The stores have a direct economic advantage to be gained 
by fresh air. . . . 

Health and efficiency in a measure go hand in hand. The kind of 
efficiency that results from a clear brain and physical buoyancy, the kind 
that even an untrained salesgirl may have, is sapped constantly by the 
breathing of vitiated air. It is sapped, too, by needless physical weari- 
ness, whether this results from counters built so close that the girls have 
not room to pass each other, and even when standing are cramped and 
uncomfortable, from the firm's neglect to provide seats, or from the tacit 
understanding, of all too frequent occurrence, that seats when provided 
are not for use. This tacit understanding at times finds expression in 
definite rules with penalties for non-observance. . . . 

Girls untrained in the ways of their trade, at work often under con- 
ditions distinctly unhealthful, are expected to counterfeit attentiveness 
by constantly standing. At times during the day they are not waiting 
on customers. At times they have no stock to arrange and are obliged 
only to be at their places. That any should have always to stand seems 
obviously unnecessary. (Pages 299-300.) 

Labor Laws and Their Enforcement with Special Reference to Massachusetts. 
Edited by Susan B. Kingsbury. New York, Longmans, Green and 
Co., 1911. 

Health conditions may show a higher average in stores than in fac- 
tories, but cases of bad conditions in stores certainly exist and these might 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS AND FACTORIES 509 

perfectly well be made illegal by a simple extension of present laws. (Page united 
266.) ^"^^"^^^ 

Saleswomen in Mercantile Stores. Baltimore. 1909. Elizabeth B. 
Butler. Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Chari- 
ties Publication Committee, 1912. 

Mercantile establishments employ a large proportion of the women 
wage-earners of this country. Although the types of saleswomen vary 
from district to district, from city to city, yet the requirements for sales- 
manship in all cities are fundamentally the same. . . . The saleswoman 
in a small specialty house or in a neighborhood store is a cog in a small 
wheel, just as the saleswoman in a department store is a cog in a large 
wheel. In both cases, the duties of her occupation are for the most part 
the same. 

This occupation, simple as it appears, involves prompt personal ad- 
justments and quick understanding. It is upon the intelligence of the 
saleswoman, and upon her attitude to the customer, quite as much as 
upon the quality of the goods, that the number and value of sales depend. 
The mercantile house, however thorough in organization and however 
responsive to public demand, must in the last analysis rely upon its sales 
force for success, and the personal efficiency of the latter must keep pace 
with the impersonal efficiency of store organization. (Pages vii-viii.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Com- great 
mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. 

Mr. William Abbots, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physicians, 
Member of the Royal College of Surgeons: 

2016. Do you think a shop more monotonous than tending spindles 
and looms in textile factories, for instance? — In a shop there is this also 
to be considered, that the assistant has to deal with a great many people 
of diflferent styles. 

2020. Would it not, therefore, be less wearing in a shop than in tend- 
ing a machine? — I do not think so. 

2023. That is quite sufficient answer to my question, if it is your 
opinion that the labour in shops is really as exacting and trying as a corre- 
sponding length of time tending machines? — It is. 

2039. I think you said just now that in shops the change which the 
assistants have makes the work not so monotonous as the work in an 
ordinary workshop, and, therefore, it is healthier? — I did not intend to 
put it quite in that way; I meant to imply more trying; that in a shop 



510 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT there is a greater strain upon the mind where you have to deal with dif- 

ferent people; so many different phases of humanity in a given time; but 
in the workshop, presuming that a woman understands the duties of 
looking after a particular machine or department, it becomes so much a 
matter of routine or habit that there is not the same strain. 

2040. Do you not think that the mental irritation that often arises 
between an assistant and a troublesome customer who is difficult to please 
is as injurious to health as the monotony of a workshop? — It would cer- 
tainly not conduce to health. 

2041. Would it conduce the other way? — Exactly. Where there are 
so many phases of humanity there is a continuous strain, supposing there 
is much business doing; and if there is not much business doing, there is 
standing the whole time, and that has the same effect physically. 

2042. The point I want to bring out is this: Although the occupations 
are entirely different, there are certain irritating circumstances which are 
quite as injurious to health as the dull monotony of tending a machine? — 
Yes. 

2043. In fact, you think that the work of shop assistants is, on the 
whole, as tiring as the work of tending machines? — I should think it is 
more so. 

Mr. Whateley Cooke-Taylor, Inspector of Factories: 

3875. With regard to the health of the people, do you think that the 
general health of those employed in workshops has certainly improved 
since the passing of the Factory and Workshops Acts? — I do. 

3876. Have you yourself noticed a considerable improvement in 
their health? — I have. 

3877. Do you think that the same result would follow if the hours in 
shops could be curtailed? — I think it would. 

Mr. James Ball Lakeman, Inspector of Factories for the Metropolitan 
District : 

858. And it would be a fair addition to the present legislation, would 
it not, that those who sell materials which have been made up should 
have the same advantages as those who make up the materials? — I think 
so, clearly. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XII. 1895. Report of Select Committee 
on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D. of University of Oxford, Fellow of 
College of Physicians and Member of the College of Surgeons; attached 
to London Hospital and Brompton Hospital: 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS AND FACTORIES 5 II 

5322. . . . Then you would not like to say that you speak with any great 



authority in particular as regards the shop assistants, would you, and that 
it is a class which has bad health? — It is a class which is very liable to 
these complaints, as far as my experience goes, especially this general 
debility, which is more frequent in them than in other classes. I will not 
say it is confined to shop assistants; it affects factory workers as well. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI . 1901. Report from Select Committee 
on Early Closing of Shops. 

Sir William S. Church, Baronet, President of the Royal College of 
Physicians: 

2288. I should like to call your attention to the fact that in the year 
1886 there was a Committee of the House of Commons on the Shop 
Hours Regulation Bill. The committee made a unanimous report to the 
House that "In many places the hours of labour in shops ranged from 
eighty to eighty-five per week, and that in their opinion such hours as 
those were injurious to health and in many cases ruinous, especially in 
the case of women." Under those circumstances the then presidents of 
the Royal College of Physicians and of the Royal College of Surgeons 
issued a circular to the medical men of London, which was signed by Sir 
Andrew Clarke, Dr. Matthew Duncan, Mr. John Marshall, Sir James 
Paget, Dr. Playfair, Dr. Priestley, Sir Richard Quain, Sir William Savory, 
Sir Samuel Wilkes; and you will probably tell the committee that those 
gentlemen were at the very head of the medical profession? — Yes. 

2289. And several of them were particularly conversant with the 
diseases of women, were they not? — That is so. 

2290. In consequence of that circular more than 300 of the medical 
men of London signed a petition to Parliament. A petition of that 
kind, signed by 300 of the medical men of London, is, you will probably 
agree, a very remarkable and unusual document to be addressed to the 
House of Commons. 

2294. All we are asking you is, that you should give the committee 
your views as to whether those hours of labour really are, in your opinion, 
as they were in the opinion of your predecessors, seriously injurious? 
If they were compulsory hours of labour, I think the State should interfere, 
in the same way as it does in the Factory Act. 

Sir William MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Surgeons: 
247L You mention physical toil. It has sometimes been urged before 
us, "You ought to remember that the work is not very arduous." I 
gather that the evils which you speak of are due to the confined condi- 



BRITAIN 



512 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT tions: to the bad air, to the constant standing, etc., rather than to the 

BRITAIN 

arduous character of the physical labour? I should consider that stand- 
ing for ten or eleven hours was exceedingly arduous labour. 

2473. We are told sometimes, "You speak of these hours as unduly 
long, but you ought to remember that the work is not so very severe, 
that it involves no great strain upon the muscles" . . . but I imagine 
that you would tell us that that is not the question, that it is the condi- 
tions under which they are spending the day, rather than the amount of 
toil, which is important? — Quite so. 

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison. 
London, P. S. King and Son, 1911. 

While conditions have without doubt greatly improved in better class 
shops, in many quarters the hours are still a terrible grievance, and fraught 
with the worst possible consequences to health. The excuse is sometimes 
made that the work is less hard than in manufacturing industry. This 
may be true to a certain extent, but it leaves out of account that the atti- 
tude of standing, if maintained for any length of time, is quite as fatiguing 
as, and probably more injurious than, movements that involve more 
muscular effort; also that, after all, nobody's day is more than twenty-four 
hours long, whatever work he may do, and the mere fact that any particu- 
lar work done is less heavy and strenuous than some other kinds does not 
ipso facto give the worker any more hours for rest, relaxation, or recreation. 
(Page 222.) 

(3) Bad Effect on Health 
(a) General Injuries to Health 

The fatigue which follows excessive working hours and long 
hours of standing in mercantile establishments, becomes 
chronic and results in general deterioration of health. While 
it may not result in immediate disease, it undermines the 
whole system by weakness and anaemia. 

The highest medical authorities in Great Britain have 
borne witness to the dire menace to health, from conditions 
of employment in British mercantile establishments similar 
to those shown to exist in stores in the United States in 
general, and in Illinois in particular. 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS: HEALTH 513 

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor. No. 91. November, 1910. Work- united 

. . STATES 

ing Hours of Wage-Earnmg IVomen in Chicago. 

The saleswomen complain bitterly of the long hours of standing even 
when there is no rush season. Many when asked concerning their health, 
reported swollen and aching feet and frequently broken arches, painful 
menstruation, and other disorders. In a few of the stores stools are 
provided and the girls are advised to sit down when not busy. In other 
stores the only seats the girls had were boxes that they hunted up them- 
selves. They were afraid to use even these when the managers or floor- 
men were around. The most bitter complaints were of the added long 
hours of Saturday night, especially when they had to get up and work 
again Sunday morning. 

Not only are the hours increased to meet the Christmas rush, but more 
help is employed. Even then, however, each employe is worked to the 
limit of endurance. Two girls reported a week's illness in bed as a result 
of the strain of the busy season, and nearly every girl reported excessive 
pains in the feet and extreme exhaustion. 

. . . Not a girl reported any additional compensation for the long hours 
of the two weeks before Christmas. Those who received a commission 
made more from additional sales, but the rate of commission remained 
the same. (Pages 897-898.) 



Report on Condition of Woman and Child IVage-Earners in the United 
States. Vol. V. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2d 
Session. 1910. 

The worst feature of this (Christmas) overtime is that it comes at the 
time of the year when the regular work is the most taxing and the women 
least able to endure longer hours. (Page 84.) 

The chief hardship of this extra work arises from the necessity of stand- 
ing throughout such a long day — eleven or twelve hours, and in extreme 
cases even fourteen hours. More than one woman reported spending all 
of Christmas Day in bed as a result. (Page 110.) 



Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor. 1884. 

We secured the personal history of these 1,032 of the whole 20,000 
working girls of Boston, a number amply sufficient for the scientific 
purposes of the investigation. (Page 5.) 

Long hours, and being obliged to stand all day, are very generally ad- 



514 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED vanced as the principal reasons for any lack or loss of health occasioned 

by the work of the girls. (Page 69.) 

Report of the New Jersey Inspector of Factories and Workshops. 1884. 

The law passed this year through the efforts of the State Trades 
Unions, compelling employers to provide seats for the use of their female 
employes, is one of the best on our statute books, and has been approved 
by men of all classes, especially by the medical fraternity, many eminent 
members of which have testified that it is destructive to the health of 
women to keep them standing for hours in mills or stores without an oppor- 
tunity to rest. (Page 25.) 

Report of the Chief of Massachusetts District Police for the year ending 
Dec. 31, 1885. 

Many complaints have been made in the public press, and some agita- 
tion in other quarters, based upon the physical hardship of compelling 
women and girls employed many hours daily in manufacturing mechanical 
and mercantile establishments to remain standing at their respective 
occupations. It was shown by the testimony of medical men that serious 
results to the health were produced in such ways. (Page 34.) 

Report of the Maine Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics. 1888. 

Many saleswomen are so worn out, when their week's work is ended, 
that a good part of their Sundays is spent in bed, recuperating for the 
next week's demands. And one by one girls drop out and die, often from 
sheer overwork. This I know from observation and personal acquain- 
tance. (Page 142.) 

National Child Labor Committee. New York. Proceedings of the Third 
Annual Conference. Cincinnati, Ohio. 1907. Some of the Ultimate 
Physical Effects of Premature Toil. Albert H. Freiberg, M.D., 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Standing occupations naturally involve the feet and legs in greatest 
strain, and more especially the feet. In consequence we see developing, 
during the adolescent years, that condition known as weak and flat foot. 
This frequently occurs in the adult also from causes of similar nature, but 
only too frequently the result of conditions and weakening which must 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS! HEALTH 



515 



be attributed to the period of active growth. . . . Commonly the foot 
loses its strength and shape gradually, so that at this time but little notice 
is taken of it. Later . . . the feet only too frequently become so painful 
that long abstention from work is imperative, and it happens not rarely 
that an entire change of employment cannot be avoided; ... for while 
medical science can do much for these unfortunates, they are often de- 
barred from continuing in trades requiring constant standing. Frequently 
upon coming under medical care the condition is such that nothing short 
of a long stay in hospital will prove availing, and this means loss of in- 
come if not loss of independence for a greater or less period. I doubt 
whether it is generally realized how frequently such conditions are met as 
those to which I have just referred. (Page 23.) 



UNITED 
STATES 



British Sessional Papers. 
Hours Bill. 



Vol. XVII. 1892. Select Committee on Shop great 



BRITAIN 



Paper handed in by the chairman. Petition in favour of the Early 
Closing Bill. 1888. (Presented by Sir John Lubbock.) 

To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great 
Britain and Ireland, in Parliament assembled. 

We, the undersigned medical men, having had our attention called to 
the very late hours to which shops are open, and being satisfied that such 
prolonged hours of labour are grievously injurious to the health especially 
in the case of women, pray your Honourable House to enact the Early 
Closing Bill, introduced by Sir John Lubbock. . . . And your petitioners 
will ever pray. 

J. Matthews Duncan, 71 Brook street. 

John Marshall, 16 Saville Row, W. 

Wm. S. Savory, 66 Brook street, W. 

Samuel Wilkes, 72 Grosvenor street. 

James Paget, 1 Harewood Place. 

Wm. O. Priestley, 17 Hertford street, Mayfair. 

W. S. Playfair, 31 George street, Hanover Square. 

Richard Quain, 67 Harley street. 

Andrew Clark, 16 Cavendish Square, and 298 others. (Page 238.) 

Petition in favour of the Early Closing Bill, 1888. To the Honourable 
Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, in Parlia- 
ment assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned: 

We, the undersigned matrons and nurses in Metropolitan hospitals, 
having had our attention called to the grievous injury which is sustained 
by women, and especially by girls, by reason of the long hours during 



5l6 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

which they are now compelled to stand in shops, humbly pray your 
Honourable House to pass the Early Closing Bill brought in by Sir John 
Lubbock. 

And your petitioners will ever pray. 

List of petitions in favour, and number of signatures from the follow- 
ing Metropolitan hospitals: 

Charing Cross Hospital, 52 signatures; Kings College Hospital, 25 
signatures; St. Mary Lebone Infirmary, 61 signatures; British Home 
for Incurables, 14 signatures; London Hospital, 93 signatures; Royal 
Free, 34 signatures; London Home Pathic Hospital, 6 signatures; 
Middlesex Hospital, 25 signatures; London Hospital, 26 signatures; 
German Hospital, London, 4 signatures. (Page 238.) 

Mr. James Ball Lakeman, Inspector of Factories and Workshops: 

732. Have you found that women and young persons suffer severely 
on account of long hours when the sanitary accommodation and other 
conditions are defective? — I cannot say that they suffer from want of 
sanitation because I have never, of course, gone into the question so 
minutely; but I know that, with regard to anaemia and varicose veins 
and dyspepsia, those are instances I myself have seen and given as the 
result of long hours of standing. 

735. But even in the case of grown women, if they were kept standing, 
working under conditions such as you describe, for more than seventy-four 
hours a week, in your judgment, and from your experience as an inspector, 
would you not expect to fmd that their health would suffer? — Yes. I 
certainly think that a continuation of labour on the system now obtaining 
must be injurious to the health of the female, whatever her age may be. 

Mr. Thomas Sutherst, Barrister, Early Closing Association: 

1243. I think we have got sufficient now to show that on the ground 
of the health of those employed in shops there is absolutely no doubt 
that the hours are too long, and the conditions very unsatisfactory? — I 
should like to mention the number of the medical faculty who have 
given evidence corroborating that without reading it; there is Sir Risden 
Bennett, Dr. Norman Kerr, Dr. B. W. Richardson, Mr. Lawson Tait, 
Mr. J. H. Rutherford, Elswick Lodge, Newcastle-on-Tyne; Dr. Arthur 
W. Edis, London; Dr. Robert H. Lloyd, Medical Superintendent, Lam- 
beth Infirmary; the late Sir Charles Bell, Dr. Peter Mark Roget, Mr. 
William Sharp, Junior, late surgeon to the Dispensary, Bradford, York- 
shire; Mr. Charles Turner Thacketh, Surgeon, late of Leeds; Mr. George 
James Guthrie, late Vice-President of the Royal College of Surgeons and 
Surgeon of Westminster Hospital; Dr. John Elliotson, late Physician to 
St. Thomas' Hospital and Medical Teacher in the London University; 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS: HEALTH 517 

Mr. Benjamin Travers, late Surgeon to St. Thomas' Hospital, Southwark, great 

BRITAIN 

and Dr. James Blundell, late Lecturer on Physiology in the School of 
Guy's Hospital. These are typical and representative men. 

1348. I may take it therefore that you think that the long hours and 
the bad conditions under which women have to labour are damaging for 
grown women, as well as for girls under 18? — Undoubtedly. 

1351. And consequently we stand today in just as great need of some 
controlling of the hours that women work as we did at that time (1886)? 
— Quite. My only difficulty is as to the best means of doing it. 

1352. You have also enlarged here upon the causes of the illnesses 
of women, the long hours at which they are kept at work, the standing, 
the bad air they have to breathe, the irregular meals with too little time 
to take them. May I take it that we may consider that your views upon 
the causes of the illnesses of women are the same today as they were then? 
— Exactly the same. 

Mr. James Austin Stacey, Secretary of the Early Closing Associ- 
ation: 

2427. As regards the question of health, would you wish to say any- 
thing upon that point. We are going to hear medical evidence upon it, 
but is there anything that you yourself wish to say with reference to it? — 
The Early Closing Association has an honorary medical staff, and it gives 
to its members privileges with regard to this staff, that is to say that for 
the payment of a membership subscription of 2s. 6d. they are entitled to 
see members of the staff at certain times free of further cost, except their 
medicine, of course. That brings us a number of applications for these 
membership tickets, and incidentally it brings us a lot of information as 
to the very prejudicial effect which the long hours of standing particularly 
has upon the health of young women. I have known in my experience a 
number of girl assistants who have been thoroughly invalided out of their 
occupations, and have either become a charge upon their parents or 
friends, or have had to enter into fresh fields of industry. 

2428. Therefore, without speaking of course with medical authority, 
you have had very large experience, and are strongly of opinion that 
these long hours are very prejudicial to health, specially I presume, in 
the case of women? — Yes; and I may say that Sir James Risdon Bennett, 
the late President of the Royal College of Physicians, was one of our 
honorary medical staff; he spoke more than once at our public meet- 
ings, and he very strongly denounced the evils of long standing, and the 
general effect of overworking upon shop assistants, particularly young 
women. 



5l8 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

Ihid. Report of the Lancet Sanitary Commission on Sanitation in the Shop. 

. . . Undoubtedly the standing for such long hours is a great and 
terrible grievance. Young shop assistants have explained to us how 
towards the evening they became giddy, "a swimming sensation" over- 
came them, and they continued to serve almost unconsciously. In time 
they became hardened to the excessive strain, but in the course of years 
many were obliged to lie up, the most frequent complaint from which 
they suffered being that of varicose veins. (Page 245.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XXXVII. 1893. The Royal Com- 
mission of Labour: Employment of Women. Reports by Misses Orme, 
Collet, etc. 

Statement by Dr. Service: The long hours which shop girls work and 
^the conditions under which they do their work are injurious to their con- 
stitutions. Prolonged standing, long hours, and want of proper sanitary 
accommodations lead to ailments affecting the bladder, bowels, uterus, 
nervous, vascular (blood) and muscular systems. These ailments are 
evidenced by the legs becoming swelled with fluid, varicose veins appear- 
ing in the lower extremities and muscular pains and weakness being felt 
from the waist to the soles of the feet. The nervous system is seriously 
injured by the undue strain which is put upon all the organs of the body. 
Facial neuralgia, spinal neuralgia, and headache are very common com- 
plaints. Anaemia (popularly speaking poverty of the blood) will be found 
in the majority of shop women. This arises from long hours, close con- 
finement, and long intervals between meals, with consequent disturbance 
of the digestive and assimilative functions. (Page 318.) 

I have also evidence from Dr. Edmistoun, who has had several oppor- 
tunities for acquiring knowledge of conditions among shop assistants, and 
who writes he "can bear testimony that the long system of shop hours is 
exceedingly injurious to young women and is undoubtedly the cause of a 
train of particular ailments such as anaemia, nervous disorders, constipa- 
tion, indigestion, and a large number of diseases peculiar to young women. 
(Page 287.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report of Select Committee 
on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Dr. Percy Kidd, M.D., University of Oxford, Fellow of the 
College of Physicians and member of the College of Surgeons; attached to 
the London Hospital and the Brompton Hospital: 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS: HEALTH 519 

5281. . . . The most common effect I have noticed of the long hours great 



is general deterioration of health; very general symptoms which we 
medically attribute to over-action and debility of the nervous system; 
that includes a great deal more than what is called nervous disease, such 
as indigestion, constipation, a general slackness, and a great many other 
indefinite symptoms. 

5303. Have you ever had any complaints from women who come as 
patients of their being obliged to stand at their work so long? — Yes, I have 
heard that complained of in many cases. . . . 5313. It is disadvantageous 
for women to stand too much, is it not? — Yes, it is. 5314. But you do not 
think many break down from that cause, do you? — It is difficult to sepa- 
rate that from the general exhaustion which results from long hours. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report by the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

5. We [the committee] are able, however, to appeal to the highest 
medical testimony as to the injury thus caused (long hours). In 1888 
presidents of the two great medical colleges with some of the other leaders 
of the medical profession, Sir James Paget, Sir Andrew Clark, Dr. Mat- 
thews Duncan, Mr. John Marshall, Dr. Playfair, Dr. Priestly, Sir Richard 
Quain, Sir Wm. Savory, Sir Samuel Wilks, called the attention of Parlia- 
ment to the subject and urged the passing of the Early Closing Bill. 

6. Considering the weight which belongs to that memorial, the com- 
mittee did not deem it necessary to multiply medical evidence on the 
subject. The presidents, however, both of the College of Physicians and 
of the College of Surgeons, have come before us and spoken strongly on 
the great and increasing evils of the present long hours. (Page v.) 

Witness, Mr. J. G. Beaumont, Representative from the Birmingham 
and District Retail Drapers and Hosiers' Association: 

348. The House of Commons Committee reported in 1886 that these 
long hours were prejudicial and often ruinous to health; have you any 
evidence on that point? . . . 

Sir James Sawyer wrote: "The manifold evils which arise in impaired 
health, induced diseases and shortened lives from working too long by 
day, and especially in a standing posture and in impure air, are well 
known to physicians, and are prominent and preventable causes of human 
suffering." Dr. Jordan Lloyd wrote: "Weakened bodies and enfeebled 
minds are necessary consequences of prolonged confinement and monot- 
onous occupation." . . . 

Dr. Malins wrote: "My experience undoubtedly tells me that the long 
hours of female shop assistants are highly detrimental to their health.". . . 



BRITAIN 



520 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

IViiness, Sir William S. Church, President of the Royal College of 
Physicians: 

2309. . . . There is one form of ailment which is aggravated by work 
such as shop assistants have to do. Those come rather under the observa- 
tion of surgeons and physicians who practice more especially in diseases 
of women. But there is another great group which falls under the observa- 
tion of the ordinary physician, and of which we see a very great deal in 
our London hospitals, and that is anaemic condition, which is produced 
partly by long hours of work, and still more so by the confinement that 
this employment entails. They do not get sufficient opportunity for 
being in the fresh air and in the sunlight, and the evil is, of course, greatly 
aggravated by late hours at night. . . . 

2319. . . . The longer the hours the greater the detriment. 

Witness, Secretary Scottish Shopkeepers' Association: 

1034. . . . Professor McKendrick, of Glasgow University, who is 
identified with our movement as Honorary Vice-President, . . . says: 
"I have no doubt whatever that the long hours and confinement of shop 
assistants are injurious to health, and I am glad in a general way to ex- 
press that opinion." . . . Then Dr. Yellowlees, Governor of the Glasgow 
Royal Lunatic Asylum, writes: "I am quite sure that the unreasonably 
long hours and close confinement of shop assistants are a great evil, and 
are often not only a great hardship, but very injurious physically, men- 
tally, and morally." 

The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, M.D., 
A.B., F.R.C.P., Late Milroy Lecturer at Royal College. London, 
Percival, 1892. 

When insufficient muscular activity is associated with almost constant 
standing, the increased difficulty to the return of the blood from the lower 
limbs is the most pronounced feature, and productive of varicose veins, 
and ulcers and thickened knee and ankle joints. (Page 19.) 

Workpeople obliged to stand long, and especially when this happens 
in early youth, lose the arch of the foot and become flat-footed, with de- 
formed ankles and often "knock knees." (Page 558.) 



{h) Injuries to the Female Functions and Childbirth 

Prominent physicians have testified as to the evil effect of 
overwork and continuous standing in mercantile establish- 
ments upon the female functions and childbirth. 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS! HEALTH 5; 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1886. Report from Select Com- great 



mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. 

Mr. William Abbotts, M.D., Member of the Royal College of Physi- 
cians, Member of the Royal College of Surgeons: 

1982. Does the fact of the assistants in shops having to stand entirely 
make any difference in point of health? — That is very injurious, to young 
people particularly. 

1983. Have any special cases of that kind come within your experi- 
ence? — Many cases, more especially as regards women; it affects the 
pelvis and pelvic organs. 

1984. And the effect is serious? — In many cases they have been 
obliged to leave their employment, and have been unfit for any employ- 
ment for a considerable time afterwards. 

2000. Does their employment injuriously affect them as child-bearing 
women in after years? — According to all scientific facts it would do so; 
it leads to pelvic diseases, and would affect them in after years when they' 
become mothers. 

2001. You have no doubt in your mind upon that? — No. 

2007. And you, as a medical man of considerable number of years' 
experience, would not look to girls who have been worked so many hours 
in one position — standing — as the bearers of healthy, strong children? — 
I should not. 

2008. Then it naturally follows, does it not, that this is a very serious 
matter in the interests of the nation as a whole, apart from the immediate 
injury to the person concerned? — Yes, as regards the physical condition 
of the future race. 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1892. Select Committee on Shop 
Hours Bill. 

Quotation from Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson: 

1241. "The effects of shop labour is of necessity injurious as impeding 
their growth and the natural development of the organs of the body. 
To the female the mischief is of the kind calculated to extend to the 
offspring she may have to bear. The diseases incident to these long hours 
in the young are anaemia in both sexes; dyspepsia with much constipation 
and flatulence; depression of spirits. In the female, suppressed natural 
function; and in males and females development of pulmonary consump- 
tion where there is a tendency to it. The depression and nervous ex- 
haustion produced by overwork and long hours leads without doubt 
to an exhaustion which seems to be relieved for the moment by stimulants 



BRITAIN 



522 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

and which produces a craving for them of the ultimate injury and further 
exhaustion of the recipient." (Page 53.) 

Quotation from Lawson Tait, Surgeon to the Birmingham and Mid- 
land Hospital for Women and Specialist in diseases of women: 

1242. . . . Shops as generally arranged, with their atmosphere charged 
with the products of gas consumption, are not conducive to health. 
Long hours for women produce a great variety of uterine and ovarian 
diseases and the general dyscrasies of anaemia. Women should not work 
more than ten hours a day, and in very many cases not so many as that. 
A great many cases under my observation, women suffering from uterine 
displacements, chronic inflammatory diseases of the ovaries and tubes. 
. . . Quotation from Dr. Norman Kerr: "It is impossible for me to find 
language strong enough to convey a hundredth part of the mischief which 
I have seen arise from the excessive hours of labour of shop assistants who 
^ have been under my professional care. The great length of the hours at 
.work I have seen break down strong constitutions, seriously aggravated 
as the evil has been by the dyspeptic misery and disease produced by the 
necessary . . . bolting of food through the far too short period allowed 
for meals." (Page 53.) 

IVitness, W. Abbotts, M.D., Editor of "Hygiene"; Member of the 
Royal College of Physicians and Royal College of Surgeons: 

4813. . . . What is it that women suflFer from chiefly in connection 
with the long hours that the committee are already satisfied shops keep 
open? — They sufl"er from various affections in the lower part of the body 
and from nervous and spinal complaints and from varicose veins. . . . 

4815. Is it not the long hours of standing, insufficient time for meals, 
and bad atmosphere which are the chief causes of the illness to which 
women are subject? — Those would be. 

4816. What are those illnesses? — Those illnesses would be various: 
irregularities of the parts incidental to women, the female organs; dis- 
eases of the spinal cord, causing nervous complaints, and varicose veins 
arising chiefiy from the long standing position. 

4817. Well-grown women suffer from these complaints through the 
long standing as well as young girls under eighteen, say? — Yes, they would. 
(Page 207.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XXXVII. 1893. The Royal Com- 
mission on Labour: Employment of Women. Reports by Misses 
Orme, Collet, etc. 
Dr. Edmistown adds that not only is the health of the women them- 
selves impaired by the conditions of their work but the evil results of 



MERCANTILE ESTABLISHMENTS! HEALTH 523 

these are to be traced in the children of women who have been employed great 
as shop assistants. He concludes by saying that the medical men of ^^^"^^^ 
our large cities could furnish further evidence of the evil effects of long 
hours, and expresses his opinion as to the need for immediate attention to 
this matter. . . . Several other medical men consulted have given general 
testimony to the same effect, the points chiefly dwelt upon by them as 
objectionable being the long hours, close confinement, want of regular 
and sufficient time for meals, bad air, want of seats, and absence of sani- 
tary accommodation. (Page 287.) . . . Again if we look at the children 
of women who have worked under the conditions mentioned, the evil 
effects are, if anything, more pronounced. Mothers with children from 
1 to 10 or 12 years of age frequently come to us wondering why their 
children are so delicate. Neither of the parents nor any of their forbears 
are or were delicate and they cannot see why their children should be. 
But on inquiry it is found that the mothers worked either in shops, mills, 
or warehouses under conditions not suitable to sound health, and de- 
bility, slight and unnoticed, takes hold of the constitution and it is only 
after some years of married life that the mischief shows itself in mother 
and children, and as an unhealthy tree cannot bring forth healthy fruit, 
no more can unhealthy mothers bring forth healthy children. Lung 
troubles are frequently seen. The main complaints that have come before 
me are anaemia, muscular weakness, nervous prostration, and uterine, 
stomach, and intestinal troubles. These complaints, which are very 
common and most damaging to the system, are interdependent and trace- 
able to the few causes before mentioned. (Page 318.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 1895. Report of Select Committee 
on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 

Witness, Miss MacDonald, M.D., attached to the Hospital for Women 
in Euston Road: 

5379. Dr. Kidd told us just now that in his experience at Brompton 
Hospital there was a good deal of general deterioration of health among 
women? — That is exactly what I should say, anaemia and general nervous 
debility. 

5386. And would not standing so long very much affect women, if they 
were married, afterwards? — It is not good for women to stand at all really. 

5387. If it is not good for them to stand at all, still less will it be good 
for them to stand thirteen hours a day? — I think it is shocking. 

5389. . . . The standing of course would exhaust the women and 
make them more liable to other illnesses. (Pages 218-219.) 



524 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT Witness, Dr. W. Chapman Grigg (formerly out-patient physician for 

the diseases of women at Westminster Hospital, and senior physician to 
the Queen Charlotte Lying-in Hospital, and connected with the Victoria 
Hospital for Children): 

5402. Would you please tell us in a general way your experience as to 
the effects of these prolonged hours on health? — It has a very grave effect 
upon the generative organs of women, entailing a great deal of suffering 
and also injuring a very large body of them permanently, setting up in- 
flammation in the pelvis in connection with those organs. . . . 

5403. ... I have had a great many sad cases come before me of women 
who were permanent invalids in consequence. 

5404. ... If the matter could be gone into carefully, I think the 
committee would be perfectly surprised to find what a large number of 
these women are rendered sterile in consequence of these prolonged hours. 

5409. ... I think it must be acknowledged that sterility is often due 
to this inflammatory mischief arising round the generative organs. I 
believe that is one of the greatest evils attached to these prolonged hours. 
I have seen many cases in families where certain members who have pur- 
sued the calling of shop-girl assistants have been sterile, while other mem- 
bers of the family have borne children. I know of one case where four 
members of a family who were shop-girls were sterile, and two other 
girls in the family, not shop-girls, have borne children; and I have known 
other cases in which this has occurred. ... I have patients come to me 
from all parts of London. It appears to be a most common condition. 

5410. When these women have children, do you find that the children 
themselves suffer from the woman having been affected by these very 
long hours? — I have seen many cases where I have attributed the mischief 
arising in childbed to this inflammatory mischief in the mother, which, 
after delivery, has set up fresh mischief, and I have seen serious conse- 
quences resulting. 

5413. You think that if the hours were altered, there would be less 
of this deterioration to health which you speak of? — I am sure of it; 
they all tell the same tale, and say it is the prolonged hours and not being 
allowed to sit down. (Pages 219-220.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report hy the Select Com- 
mittee of the House of Lords on Early Closing of Shops. 

Witness, Sir W. MacCormac, President of the Royal College of Sur- 
geons : 

2467. And you can hardly expect that women who have been suffer- 



NECESSITY FOR LEGISLATION 525 

ing from such long hours should become the mothers of healthy children? great 

• • BRITAIN 

— That is what I ventured to hint. It must have an influence on their 
offspring undoubtedly. 

2468. . . . It is gradual and progressive in its effect, and it goes on, 
I am afraid, in a cumulative degree. 

2469. You mean that from generation to generation the population 
will become feebler and feebler, and less able to resist disease? — It must 
suffer from the influence of it, no doubt. (Page 120.) 

The Hygiene, Diseases, and Mortality of Occupation. J. T. Arlidge, 
M.D., A.B., F.R.C.R London, Percival, 1892. 

Continuous standing for hours together is a strain especially upon 
the arch of the feet and the ankle joints; a cause of weary spine and spinal 
curvature, favoring also pelvic fullness, and in the female sex, productive 
of derangements of the uterine functions and of uterine displacements. 
(Page 170.) 

fVomen's Work. A. Amy Bulley and Margaret Whitley. London, 
Methuen, 1894. 

The long hours of standing are, of course, apt to be injurious to the 
health of women, and especially of young girls. Physicians give evidence 
of diseases contracted in this manner, and the report of the "Sanitary 
Commission" of the Lancet, though moderate in expression, is sufficiently 
explicit upon this point. (Page 56.) 



(4) The Necessity for Legislation: Voluntary Action 
Insufficient 

In the United States as well as abroad the failure of volun- 
tary action in regulating the hours of labor in mercantile 
establishments has proved that legislation is necessary to 
protect saleswomen from extreme overwork. 

The uniform requirement of limited working hours there- 
fore checks the unscrupulous purchaser, as well as the un- 
scrupulous merchant, and enables the enlightened and hu- 
mane employers to shorten the working day without fear 
of underbidding competitors. 



526 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



Report of the Consumers' League of tie City of New York for the Year 1904. 

Many merchants regret that they and their employes must add hours 
of evening work to the already fatiguing experiences of holiday selling, 
and almost all of them express themselves as willing to close their stores 
earlier, if all their neighboring competitors would do the same; but as 
long as a few merchants hold out against this willingness to stand together, 
the great burden of Christmas overwork will continue to fall upon those 
least able to bear it. (Page 23.) 

Ihid. 1908. 

If merchants are honestly willing to close, "provided their competitors 
will do the same," but feel themselves unable to do so because their com- 
petitors will not fall into line, it is certainly time for enlightened public 
opinion to demand legislation preventing such strain upon women and 
young girls. (Page 31.) 



GREAT 
BRITAIN 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 
mittee on Shop Hours Bill. 



1892. Report from Select Com- 



Mr. Dudley C. Cornes, Employe of the Early Closing Association: 

1754. Then, notwithstanding the assistance which your society can 
give, and the agitation which you can carry on, may we look upon it 
that voluntary efforts are, more or less, a failure? — They are, more or less. 

1755. Practically a failure? — Practically a failure. 

1758. As you say that voluntary effort has been practically a failure, 
do you see any way in which it is possible to bring that about, except b}^ 
legislation in some shape? — I see no way at all except by legislation. 

Mr. Thomas Sutherst, Barrister: 

1366. I think you also admit that voluntary action has been a failure; 
that is substantially the sum of your replies? — I say that to effectually 
deal with the evil, although it has done some good, I am afraid it never 
would accomplish any substantial improvement. 

1368. You consider legislation is the only real remedy? — 1 do. 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XII. 
tee on Shops {Early Closing) Bill. 



1895. Report of Select Commit- 



Mr. James Austin Stacey, Secretary of the Early Closing Association: 

12. You gave evidence then (1892), that, in your opinion, though 

voluntary action had done much good in many cases, it was not competent 



NECESSITY FOR LEGISLATION 527 

to cure the evil as a whole. Is that still your opinion? — Yes. And that, great 

BRITAIN 

I may say, is the opinion of various traders' associations in various parts 
of the country. 

147. You support this legislation because you contend that voluntary 
action has ceased to have effect; is that so? — It has ceased to make the 
progress that the traders themselves declare to be necessary for the 
health and well-being of their assistants, and for economical reasons to 
themselves. 

148. You would say that your Early Closing Association has not been 
able to get any further early closing by voluntary action? — Not further 
than we have gone. We have gone a great way. 

149. You are at a standstill? — Year by year we bring about a certain 
number of improvements, averaging over 1,000 improvements during the 
past four or five years, but then the mischief is, as in the case of Brixton, 
one or two men come along and upset the whole thing, and the work 
has to be done over again, not always successfully. 

Mr. John Adams Cooney, Chairman of the Scottish Shopkeepers' and 
Assistants' Union: 

914. Then your impression is that voluntary action would not be of 
much use? — It is useless. 

915. For what reason? — It has been so often tried, and has been a 
failure in each case. 

Mr. Thomas W. Flint, Scottish Shopkeepers' and Assistants' Union: 

1182. Do you not think there has been a great improvement of late 
years under the voluntary system, and that the hours are much shorter 
than they were twenty years ago? — No, I do not. 

1183. Do I understand you to say you have not found any great 
improvement under the voluntary system? — I do; I have seen no great 
improvement. 

1184. That is why you are in favor of some compulsory measures 
being adopted? — Yes. 

Mr. Edward Day, Secretary of the West Yorkshire Federated Chamber 
of Trade: 

1279. When voluntary arrangements are made with regard to the 
hours of closing, is it within your experience that those voluntary arrange- 
ments frequently break down? — Quite so. 

Mr. John Griffm Beaumont, Honorary Secretary of the Birmingham 
Early Closing Association: 

2770. Have you any hopes of being able to diminish those hours by 
voluntary action? — None whatever. 

2771. I understand that you have almost abandoned any voluntary 



528 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

action in the matter? — Yes, we have. The association has been working 
for many years with practically no result, except a little in the matter of 
the weekly half-holiday. 

2772. And there is no tendency at present to shortening the hours? — 
There is a strong public sympathy with the movement, and a tendency 
on the part of the employers; but at the present time we are at the mercy 
of the minoritv. 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. VI. 1901. Report from Select Com- 
mittee on Early Closing of Shops. 

Mr. James Austin Stacey, Secretary of the Early Closing Association: 

7. But the evidence given before the Committee of the House of Com- 
mons which sat in 1886 I think satisfied your association, did it not, that a 
reasonable hour could only be obtained by legislative action? — That is so. 

Mr. John Griffin Beaumont, Representative of the Birmingham and 
District Retail Drapers' and Hosiers' Association: 

332. Have you and the associations that you represent any hope of 
shortening those hours by voluntary action? — We have no hope of short- 
ening the hours to any appreciable extent by voluntary effort. Unless 
reasonable arrangements are protected by legislative enforcement, there 
is but little hope of any curtailment of hours in any large center of popula- 
tion. 

Mr. Frank Dawson Chambers, Representative of the Eastward Dis- 
trict Associated Trades: 

2422. Has your association any hope of getting early closing by 
voluntary action? — None whatever. Voluntary action has succeeded to 
the extent of inducing the larger shops to close one afternoon a week, but 
earlier closing has failed altogether. 

Mr. James Macpherson and Miss Margaret G. Bondfield, General and 
Assistant Secretaries of the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assis- 
tants, Warehousemen, and Clerks: 

2575. Have you any hope of getting a more reasonable state of things 
by voluntary efforts? — No. Many years ago those who are associated 
with the working of our organization have abandoned that hope. 



(5) Adaptation of Customers to Shorter Hours 

Experience shows how the demands of customers yield to 
the requirements of a fixed working day. When shoppers 



ADAPTATION OF CUSTOMERS 529 

are not able to make purchases late in the evening, they 
become accustomed to shop earlier in the day, and thus 
enable merchants to shorten the working hours of their 
saleswomen. 

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor. No. 91. November, 1910. Work- UNITED 
ing Hours of IVage-Earning Women in Chicago. 

The need of keeping these neighborhood stores open evenings on half 
of the nights each week seems to be due rather to competition between 
stores than to the real need of the customers. Both managers and girls 
reported that not many years ago the stores were open every night ex- 
cept one. Now they are closed three nights a week. The owner of a 
large store in one neighborhood reported that he does better business 
now than he did under the longer hours, and if all the stores were obliged 
to close earlier he would be glad to close, for he could so arrange the hours 
that there would be no inconvenience to him. . . . The manager of the 
largest one stated that there had been no loss of trade because of the 
closing. The people quickly learn to adapt themselves to the store hours. 
Since the saleswomen in these stores speak the language and know the 
taste of the people who buy of them, and since even car fare downtown 
is an expense item to be considered among the people of these neighbor- 
hoods, there seems little danger that the neighborhood stores would be 
deserted for the downtown stores. Besides, they are too great a conveni^ 
ence in a city of "long distances." 

Among the more experienced saleswomen who were interviewed on 
the subject, the general opinion was that the people could be educated to 
do shopping during the week days just as well as at night and on Sundays. 
But all the stores would have to close or none could afford to. (Page 895.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol. XIL 1886. Report from Select Com- GREAT 
mittee on Shop Hours Regulation Bill. 

Mr. Whateley Cooke-Taylor, Inspector of Factories: 

3823. Do you think that there would be any inconvenience to the 
public in limiting the hours of shopping? — No, 1 think that the public 
would very soon get used to it. 

3824. In your opinion, would there be any diminution in the amount 
of business done? — Not in the long run. It is conceivable that for a short 
time there might be, but I think it would be an extremely short time; in fact, 
in the long run it is conceivable that there would be more business done. 

34* 



530 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT Mr. Alexander Redgrave, C.B., Principal Inspector of Factories: 

®^^ 54. And do not you think that the work would be so much improved 

by the hours being shortened, that the shopkeepers would practically get 
as much labour out of their assistants in the shortened hours as they 
get now in the longer hours? — I think that the public would learn that 
they must go to the shops at an earlier hour in the day, and that the 
same amount of work would be done. 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 1892. Report from the Select 
Committee on Shop Hours Bill. 

Mr. George Sutherland, Representative of the Northwestern Shop- 
keepers' Association of Glasgow: 

663. I think that is an adequate answer to the objection that if all 
the shops were closing early it would be a great inconvenience to cus- 
tomers, seeing that such a large body of the general public deal at shops 
where already these shorter hours really have been in force? — I speak 
with a life-long experience of between thirty and forty years behind the 
counter in Glasgow and in the country of Scotland, and my decided 
conviction, based on that experience, is that no inconvenience is felt by 
the customers through the earlier closing of the shops. 

Mr. Frank Debenham, Member of the firm of Debenham & Freebody: 

2358. How about those poor neighborhoods where the shops are kept 
open until 9.00 or 10.00 o'clock at night; do not you think something 
requires to be done to shorten the hours there? — It would be a very good 
thing if something could be done; I should not despair of bringing public 
opinion to bear, even among the classes that support the shops that keep 
open late, with a view of getting them to close early. . . . It is a question 
of adjustment; there is a good deal of carelessness, and unnecessary care- 
lessness, in the matter. 

Mr. John Griffm Beaumont, Honorary Secretary of the Birmingham 
Early Closing Association: 

2824. I do not think that the late shopping in the suburbs is conse- 
quent upon that in any way; it is simply due to the fact that the shops 
are open, and to people's thoughtlessness in the matter. The shops are 
open, not because the employers wish to keep open, but because one man 
opens, and the custom becomes law. 

2894. You would think, I dare say, that they could rearrange their 
shopping arrangements to meet the new condition of affairs without much 
inconvenience? — Without any inconvenience, and that has been done 
within the last five years. In our own establishment we have reduced 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 53I 

our hours an hour a day without any decrease in the returns, or any great : 

BRITAIN 

complaint on the part of the public. 

Councillor John Jamieson, Representative of the Scottish Shopkeepers' 
Union : 

3293. From your acquaintance with Edinburgh would you say there 
was much difference in the interests of the different quarters of the city? — 
A good deal; but a great deal of it is just "use and wont." Undoubtedly, 
where the late shopping prevails they could be easily educated into early 
shopping. 

3296. What would you say was the reason of it? — Just an extremely 
bad habit that has grown up by the custom of years. 

History of Factory Legislation. B. L. Hutchins and A. Harrison. 
London, P. S. King and Son, 1911. 

It is highly probable that the supposed inconvenience to the working- 
class consumer of early closing is more a matter of habit than necessity, 
and that if a uniform limit were applied, gradually reducing the hours 
that could be worked in shops, the habits of the community would adjust 
themselves to the change without involving any hardship or tyranny 
nearly so oppressive as that now endured by the employes themselves. 
(Page 222.) 

C. Millinery and Dressmaking Establishments 
(1) Seasonal Characteristics 

These occupations are ''season trades/' entailing a 
''rush" period of intense activity followed by enforced 
idleness. Where there is no legal limitation of the day's 
work, it is often limited only by the worker's endurance, 
during the "rush" season. 

The Training of Millinery Workers. Alice P. Barrows. Proceedings united 
of the Academy of Political Science. Columbia University. New 
York, IP 10.* 

The season also has its effect upon workroom conditions. "It's rush, 

rush all the time, and then nothing to do." In 62% of the shops investi- 

* This article is based upon a report not yet published on Women at Work in 
Millinery Shops in New York City. It is the result of an investigation carried on for 
the Alliance Employment Bureau of New York from the autumn of 1907 until the 



532 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



gated the girls worked nine to nine and a half hours daily. A large 
majority had a working week of fifty to fifty-five hours. In only eight 
was the week less than fifty hours. In 86% of the shops the day's work 
lasted regularly until six o'clock or later — an important fact when the 
question of evening school work is to be considered. 71% of the girls 
worked overtime in the busy season. During the overtime season the 
total hours varied from less than ten up to fifteen a day. (Page 44.) 



Millinery. An unpublished investigation made in New York City. 

In 41 establishments there was no overtime. 

103 establishments required overtime. 

In 34 of these there was no overtime after 9 p. m. 

In 36 of these there was overtime after 9 p. m. 

The closing hour was not stated definitely for the remaining ?>^. 



Total Hours Daily Including Overtime, in Millinery Establishments 





Number 


Per cent 


Less than 10 hours 


10 
12 
14 
19 

8 

1 


16 


10 to 11 hours., 


19 


11 to 12 " 


22 


12 to 12 " 


30 


13 to 14 " .' 


12 


14 to 15 " 


1 






Total 


64 


100 







Makeshift workrooms arising out of the precarious character of the 
trade, crowded rooms due to taking on the casual workers for the rush 
season, "bad air" made worse because of this overcrowding, long and 
irregular hours caused by the necessity for doing six months' business in 
three, unregulated piece-work resulting in a poor product and homework, 
petty nagging in order to squeeze the greatest profit out of every moment 
of time, — these were some of the features which made the workroom con- 
ditions in the millinery trade worthy of the study of the legislators. These 
conditions were not flagrantly bad in any one particular. They com- 
pressed two hours work into one so that "it was eating and sleeping at the 

spring of 1909. Two hundred millinery girls were interviewed. More than two 
hundred shops including all in which the two hundred workers had been employed 
since July, 1907, were visited. 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 533 

rained the nerves of forewomen and 
them limp and lifeless after a ten-hour day. (Page 54.) 



same time," and strained the nerves of forewomen and workers, leaving united 

° STATES 



How Girls Learn the Millinery Trade. Mary VanKleeck and Alice P. 
Barrows ojthe Committee on Women's Work, Russell Sage Foundation. 
The Survey, April 16, 1910. 

The blight of the slack season falls upon establishments in all parts 
twice a year . . . emptying workrooms and dismantling show rooms, 
completely shutting down some establishments or leaving four or five 
girls listlessly working on a few hats in rooms which a month before had 
been packed with two hundred girls working at machine speed. . . . 

The seasons are not only short. They are irregular. Some wholesale 
houses begin fall work in July, some in the middle of July, some in August. 
The retail season begins at any time between September and October. 
(Page 107.) 

Studies in the Economic Relations of Women. Issued by the Department of 
Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Boston, 
1911. Millinery. {Forthcoming Report.) 

Millinery is a striking example of a seasonal fashion trade. There are 
two busy seasons, the fall season, beginning usually in September, and 
ending in November or December, and the spring season, opening a few 
weeks before Easter and closing in June. The date of opening of the 
seasons varies and is usually determined by the uncertain weather. 

At the very beginning of the busy season there is a leisurely air about 
the workroom. The girls coming back after their vacations are glad to 
see each other, and eager to begin work upon the new hats to satisfy their 
woman's curiosity as to the new styles and materials. . . . Gradually as 
pioneer customers recover from their first feeling of uncertainty as to the 
new styles and begin to purchase their hats, the girls are made to work 
more swiftly, a tense feeling creeps into the atmosphere, hats are brought 
back for alterations while hat-weary customers impatiently await their 
return. 

Work begins to pile up which must be gotten out "by Saturday night 
at the latest." The workroom discipline of silence is rigidly enforced, 
and the whole force is working under a nerve-racking pressure. This 
continues for several weeks without cessation until perhaps after an es- 
pecially busy, trying Saturday "Madame" enters the workroom to in- 
form her force that she has no orders for the next week, that she will have 



534 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



to let some of her help go. It is this sudden rush and the uncertainty of 
its continuation that makes the seasonal question such a very serious one 
in millinery. (Chapter 11, MS Pages 10-11.) 



Number of women employed in custom millinery work during the year in the 
United States, 1900. Census of manufactures, 1900. Vol. VI 1, General Tables, 
p. 54. 



50,000 



40/)00 



30^0 



20,000 



10,000 



^ 



Three . . . difficulties accompany the seasonal question of millinery. 
They are (1) the necessity of taking on during the busy season a large 
force of workers which must be dismissed as soon as the early rush is 
over; (2) the almost inevitable overtime which goes with the filling of 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 



535 



rush orders, and (3) the nervous strain both of the employer and employee 
of doing rush work under pressure. (Chapter IV, MS Page 12.) 

The general characteristic of the seasonal aspect of the millinery trade is 
one of vagueness. Nobody can predict with any degree of assurance what 



UNITED 
STATES 



Number of women employed in custom dressmaking during the year in the United 
States, 1900. Census of manufactures, 1900, Vol. VII, General Tables, p. 54. 



60.000 




55.000 




50,000 




I 


S 

• 








• * 




i 
i 


45.060 


'J 


















• 














40.000 


i 

-> 








•& 








35,003 




■2 








• 












^ 1 
































■ 










38.M0 
















v> 










23,800 
















^ 












2 




i 


d 


o 


<0 
•0 

« 
■<*■ 






s 


« 


9t 




20.000 
















1 











the situation will be at any time, in any establishment, for any worker. 
Yet the investigation has shown some tendencies which stand in 
relief against the general background of unceitainty and indefmiteness. 



536 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

1. The majority of milliners can obtain from six to nine months' em- 
ployment in a year. The minimum for most workers is six months, while 
the girl of exceptional ability can often work the year round, or nearly that. 

2. A maker's season varies somewhat with the type of shop in which 
she works. The longest seasons are obtained by makers in wholesale 
houses, and the shortest by makers in department stores. 

4. Unemployment is not the only evil of the seasonal trade. The 
rush season with its long hours, and its pressure on the worker, is produc- 
tive of intense discomfort, if not of permanent physical injury. (Chap- 
ter V, MS Pages 20-21.) 



(2) Bad Effect on Health 

The unregulated length of the workday and the require- 
ment of overtime work in these trades, constitute a menace 
to the health of the women employed therein. The busy 
season is characterized by ''rush'' work and extreme 
*' speeding-up." The workers may be so greatly strained 
by even a short ''rush" season that health is permanently 
impaired. 

Studies in the Economic Relations of Women. Issued by the Department 
of Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Boston, 
1911. Millinery. {Forthcoming Report.) 

During the busy season a large number of workers are taken on and 
the workroom is at a terrible pitch of nervous tension. The very uncer- 
tainty of the season, due to the variableness of the weather, adds greatly 
to the strain. (Chapter IV, MS Page 9.) 

There are certain evils of the short season trade which affect all mil- 
liners to a greater or less degree, others which only a part of the workers 
feel. Chief among the former is the terrible speeding up which has been 
mentioned in a previous chapter. In some instances it means overtime 
work, in others it means not an actual lengthening of the working day, but 
quickening of the pace throughout the workroom, until every one in it is 
working up to the limit of endurance, if not beyond it. Over and over 
again came the refrain from the workers, " It's a terrible life." This of a 
trade which many girls enter because they are "too delicate" for store or 
factory work! (Chapter V, MS Page 11.) 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 



537 



The nervous strain upon both employer and employee of doing rush united 
work is very great, how great only one who has experienced it can tell. 
(Chapter IV, MS Pages 9-16.) 



Vocations for Boston Girls. Issued by the Vocation Office for Girls, 
ton, Mass., 1911. Bulletin No. 6: Millinery. 



Bos- 



The hours are long, — often as long as the law permits during the busy 
seasons, and the work is unusually strenuous. In many of the smaller 
establishments evening work is required once or twice a week. (Page 6.) 

Studies in the Economic Relations of Women. Issued by the Department 
of Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Bos- 
ton, 1911. Dressmaking. {Forthcoming Report.) 

In one large alteration workroom men and women were discovered 
working side by side on coats and shirts. The men were Russians and 
Armenians. The women were Americans and Nova Scotians. The 
women earned ,^8 to $10 a week, the men $14 to $15. " Men can turn out 
three to four times as much work by the end of the week," said the fore- 
man. "They can be pushed more without showing bad effects. They 
are more stable, and less inclined to nervous strain and overwork." 

On the whole, dressmaking, as carried on at the present day, is a nerve 
racking trade. The work must be done in certain definite periods of the 
year. Orders all pile up at once. "It's the 'nerve work' in it that I 
can't stand. People are in and out. They want this ready and that ready 
at such a moment," said a waist draper receiving $20 a week. Nervous 
and unreasonable customers make nervous and irritable employers, which 
in turn rebounds to the misfortune of the employee. (Chapter on Indus- 
trial Problems, MS Page 47.) 

The evil effects of long hours and overtime for women have been so 
clearly and voluminously portrayed in the United States and Europe that 
it seems unnecessary to deal with them except in a cursory way. The 
physical and nervous strain of overtime added to the regular working day 
is self evident. The work begins at the regular hour the following day 
regardless of the hour at which the worker left the shop the preceding 
night. (Chapter on Hours of Labor, MS Page 16.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVII. 
of Factories and Workshops. 



1893. 



Report of Chief Inspector great 

BRITAIN 



It should always be borne in mind that in the majority of cases where 
overtime is made the work is especially trying and the rooms stuffy, ill- 



538 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

GREAT ventilated, and the air rendered very impure by the large quantity of gas 

required to be burning. Perhaps no class of work is more enfeebling than 
dressmaking, and the making of other various articles of wearing apparel. 
(Page 90.) 

Much of the good done by the Factory Act is undone by allowing deli- 
cate women and girls to work from 8 a. m. to 10 p. m. for 2 months of the 
year. (Page 92.) 

British Sessional Papers. Vol XXI. 1894. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and IVorkshops for the Year 1893. 

Few persons enjoying the comforts and conveniences which civiliza- 
tion provides for them are aware that the articles of clothing, utility, or 
X ornament, which they possess are in many instances purchased at a fear- 
ful cost in the deterioration, or even destruction within a brief period, of 
the health of those who are engaged in their manufacture. 

Even where these evil effects are not so marked, there are often in- 
fluences at work which are sapping the vital powers of the industrial 
population and stunting their growth. 

This is a matter of national interest and importance. ... It seems 
evident from the reports of the inspectors that the confinement in close 
workrooms and the long hours of work allowed in milliners' and dress- 
makers' establishments, under the denomination of overtime, are injurious 
to the health of the workpeople. 

The reduction of overtime for women and young persons would do much 
to bring about a more healthy state of things. (Page 6.) 

The arguments against overtime seem to me to be: 

2. That the long hours of confinement are injurious to the health of 
the workers. (Page 17.) 

Overtime allows but scanty opportunities for leisure, and for indoor 
workers it often means that but one day in the week is available for exer- 
cise or amusement. The consequent effect upon the health of the workers 
is exceedingly injurious, especially in the case of the indoor workers to 
whom I have referred and who have been practically imprisoned for five 
days in the week, and until the evening of the sixth. (Page 11.) 

They (i. e. the workers at these trades) are accustomed to sitting for 
long hours at what is probably the most trying to the constitution of all 
trades, and when one takes into consideration the impurity of the air in 
the average workroom where gas has been burning for some time, it is not 
surprising to see how anemic and fragile many of them look. (Page 16.) 

... Do we know of the numbers that fall in the struggle for existence. 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 539 

how many are used up as soon as the seasons are over, and what efforts great 
are made to gain strength enough to endure the next year's term of toil. ^^"^^^ 
(Page 23.) 

It (overtime) is not desirable for, in many cases (that of milliners and 
dressmakers especially) the long hours are most prejudicial to the health of 
the employees. (Page 299.) 

Rapports pre sent es a M. le Ministre de Commerce, de V Industrie, des Posies FRANCE 
et des Telegraphes par les Inspecteurs du Travail. [Reports presented 
to the (French) Minister of Commerce, Labor, etc., etc., by the Factory 
Inspectors.] La Question de V Interdiction du Travail de Nuit. [The 
Question of Prohibiting Night IVork.] Paris, 1900. 

Late hours of work, as well as actual night work, are destructive to the 
health of girls and women. We have had occasion more than once to 
observe the injurious effect of evening overtime. When night hours 
are added to those of the day's labor the result is overwork which directly 
saps the strength and promotes the craving for alcoholic stimulant. Dur- 
ing an inquiry made in Marseilles a number of sewing girls complained 
that after a certain number of evenings with late overtime they found it 
impossible to sleep. Though overcome by fatigue, they lay awake until 
early morning, when it was nearly time to go to work again. In conse- 
quence, they did not have the seven hours of sleep imperatively necessary 
for an adult. Failing to have restful nights after the days' work, insomnia 
supervenes with all its terrors. Sleep has so vast an importance with 
regard to health that there is perhaps no function deserving of more serious 
consideration. Everything that interferes with the hygiene of sleep is 
dangerous, because the equilibrium of the nervous system is imperilled. 
(Pages 84-85.) 

La Revue de Paris, Sept.-Oct, 1904. Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes. 
[Night Work of Women.] Georges Alfassa. 

But night work is especially injurious when, in place of substituting it 
for day work it is added thereto; in other words, when, in addition to the 
day, there is evening work, as was the case in Paris before the law of 1892. 
. . . They were kept until midnight, 2 a. m., sometimes all night. Such 
overtime working hours are extremely exhausting, for the workers have 
had no food since midday except some hasty mouthfuls in the early even- 
ing. (Pages 368-369.) 



540 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



FRANCE First International Conference of the Consumers' Leagues at Geneva, 1908. 

La Veillee: Ahus et Responsabilites. [Overtime: Abuses and Re- 
sponsibilities.] Mme. a. Paul Juillerat, French Factory Inspector. 
Fribourg, 1909. 

Those who have not seen clothing establishments in full activity can 
hardly imagine the dreadful fatigue and sapping of strength resulting 
from these days of frenzied speed. (Page 52.) 

The sewing girls, hurried on all sides, fingers trembling, are literally 
exhausted when their work is done. ... At seven, instead of going away 
to get supper they are told " We will work overtime." They have lunched 
at noon, and since then have not left their chairs; perhaps a bite was 
snatched at four; . . . without being able to send word home, they must 
resume work for the evening. . . . Eleven o'clock comes . . . midnight. 
' ... At one o'clock the poor sewing girl, thoroughly worn out, is not 
hungry, has but one wish — to sleep a little before beginning again the 
next day. Sometimes, at night, the last car has run, and the young 
woman has to go home on foot. (Page 54.) 



AUSTRIA 



Le Travail de Nuit des Femmes dans V Industrie. Rapports sur son im- 
portance et sa reglementation legale. Preface par Etienne Bauer. 
[Night IVork of IVomen in Industry. Reports on its importance and 
legal regulation. Preface by Etienne Bauer.] Le Travail de Nuit 
des Femmes dans V Industrie en Autriche. [Night Work of IVomen in 
Industry in Austria.] Ilse von Arlt. Jena, Fischer, 1903. 

What we have just said (regarding evils of night work) is equally ap- 
plicable to establishments less important than factories, with this added 
circumstance, that the fatigue arising from the day's work is increased by 
late overtime, making the task still more arduous. 

Here, after a day's work already too long, when "night work" must be 
accomplished in addition, the body becomes incapable of enduring the 
more intensive demands which are unremittingly made upon it. This 
overtime is the most destructive form of night work, and it is found in 
all those establishments that are not classed as factories. (Page 82.) 

. . . The suitable limits of working time vary with individuals but it 
is acknowledged that not only is a regularly long day of work injurious, 
but also that a single isolated instance of overstrain may be harmful to a 
woman all the rest of her life, — a fact that is of importance for workers in 
seasonal trades, and all the more so because the general ignorance of 
people as to hygiene for women gives no reason to anticipate any initia- 
tive for reform among the workers themselves. (Page 86.) 



millinery and dressmaking 54 1 

(3) Legal Limitation of Working Hours Promotes Better 
Organization in the Season Trades 

Where the employment of women has been prohibited 
more than ten hours in one day, the supposed necessity 
for dangerously long and irregular hours in the season 
trades is shown to be in large part avoidable. Employers 
have found it possible to obviate such irregularities by 
foresight and management. 

Studies in the Economic Relations of Women. Issued by the Department 5}?JX§5 
of Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Bos- 
ton, 1911. Millinery. {Forthcoming Report.) 

It would be safe to say that practically none of the better and larger 
stores, parlors and department stores, where stock hats are kept and the 
business does not depend entirely upon orders, demand overtime of their 
workers. The fact that this class of establishment is under closer super- 
vision than the others, probably serves to mitigate the evil here. The 
worst offenders are those shops which depend very largely upon orders 
for their trade. The smaller parlors, milliners and stores, located usually 
in a lodging or a foreign section, and the wholesale milliners offend in this 
subject. (Chapter IV, MS Pages 14-15.) 

Studies in the Economic Relations of Women. Issued by the Department of 
Research of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. Boston, 
1911. Dressmaking. {Forthcoming Report.) 

Some shops have worked out a highly systematized arrangement of 
work, so that there is little rush, overtime, or irregularity. "Every 
morning," said one worker, "a schedule is posted showing just how much 
work must be finished that day. . . . Not a moment of time is lost when 
the force is on up to the last minute of the last day of the season." 

The work is carefully and systematically arranged and planned by the 
employer or head of the workroom. The employer knows just how much 
can be done in a specified time and refuses to take more orders than can 
be completed by a certain date. It is portioned out among head girls 
who are in turn responsible for their particular portion of the production. 
The head girl at the head of her table supervises and directs her various 
workers who sit about the table, each doing her particular phase of the 



542 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



work. In a well-systematized workroom, there is little overtime or rush, 
but a continuous and fairly steady rate of speed throughout the working 
season. . . . Where consideration and kindness are shown the employees 
. . . and regularity of work is secured a remarkably steady force is dis- 
covered. An employer of 55 workers has had most of her girls for years. 
She likes to train them up through the stages. Another employer of 30 
girls says a large proportion have worked up from the bottom, beginning 
as errand girls. (Chapter on Industrial Problems, MS Pages 43-46.) 

Systematic organization of the work is also an equally important factor 
in maintaining a regular working day. Some well-regulated shops open 
and close like clock work. Workers who have been employed there for 
years have never known five minutes overtime. Others are unanimously 
reported by the workers as regular offenders in the matter of overtime. 
There are not sufficient workers and the work is poorly systematized and 
arranged. Consequently, the gowns are not completed at the specified 
time and the workers must finish them before they go home at night. 
(Chapter on Hours of Labor, MS Page 4.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol. XVI I. 
of Factories and Workshops. 



1893. Report of Chief Inspector 



. . . There will always be some people who do not know how to 
refuse orders, however little they may be prepared to execute them, and 
who expect their workpeople to help them out of the difficulty by working 
excessive hours. . . . The most serious offenders are still the dressmakers 
and milliners, who despite the fact of the special sanction which they have 
under the law to work exceedingly long hours are not satisfied, and fre- 
quently exceed the more than liberal legal allowance. (Page 88.) 



British Sessional Papers, 
of Factories. 



Vol. XXI. 1894. Report of Chief Inspector 



The greater part of my work so far has been connected with dress- 
makers, tailoresses, milliners, etc. The question of overtime has been 
much before me. Much of the necessity for overtime . . . arises from 
want of method and forethought on the part of employers, forewomen, and 
customers, rather than from extreme pressure of business. Promises are 
made, no doubt, which without having recourse to overtime it is im.possible 
to keep. Sometimes by the employer who, unwilling to risk losing an 
order, shuts his eyes to the fact that his workers have already more to do 
than they can well manage, sometimes by the forewoman who is anxious 



MILLINERY AND DRESSMAKING 543 

to turn out as much work per week as possible, and thinks she will manage great 

• BRITAIN 

it "somehow," and yet in many workrooms where the management is 
efficient, and the fact is accepted that an order must sometimes be re- 
fused, overtime is not required at all, and the employer apparently pros- 
pers. (Page 15.) 

It (overtime) is not necessary, for in a large proportion of cases in so- 
called season trades, advantage is simply taken by certain firms to mon- 
opolize a larger share of work than they are warranted by their plant 
in undertaking, or by customers in unnecessarily delaying their orders 
knowing that overtime will come to their rescue. (Page 299.) 



British Sessional Papers. Vol XIX. 1895. Report of the Chief In- 
spector of Factories and Workshops. 

There are many large firms of dressmakers and milliners who never 
work overtime, and 1 can only think that if they are able to do without surely 
others can. In the latter case all work is taken, no orders refused on 
account of not being able to complete within the time specified by the 
customer, however unreasonable this may be. If overtime were not 
permitted it would simply mean that the customer would have to give the 
order earlier and it might perhaps give employment to more girls. (Page 
192.) 

Royaume de Belgique. Rapport presents a M. le Ministre de V Industrie BELGIUM 
et du Travail. [Report made to the Belgian Minister of Commerce and 
Labor.] Travail de Nuit des Ouvrieres de V Industrie dans les Pays 
Etrangers. [Night Work for Women in Industry in Foreign Countries.] 
Maurice Ansiaux. Brussels, 1898. 

A great Parisian costumer, though hostile to governmental interfer- 
ence, told me that previously the forewoman never hastened the prepara- 
tion of work, so that owing to this slackness evening work frequently be- 
came indispensable. At 7 o'clock in the evening it would be noticed that 
the skirt or waist undertaken was still incomplete; it was necessary, 
therefore, to work part of the night. 

To-day the forewomen know that evening work is prohibited, conse- 
quently they so arrange the work that all can be finished within the period 
prescribed by the law. 

Under the previous system was the worker free to refuse to take part 
in the night work? By no means. Very often at the moment when she 
was preparing to leave the shop, the forewoman would say to her: "We 



544 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



BELGIUM continue work this evening." It was necessary for her to remove her 
hat and to remain in the shop until work ended. 

"The liberty of the workers was purely fictitious," said one of the 
women before the Investigation Committee. "It was necessary to work 
or to quit. Between two evils, we chose the less." (Pages 60-61.) 



CANADA 



UNITED 
STATES 



D. The Telephone Service 

(1) Character of the Business 

Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Employment 
between the Bell Telephone Co. of Canada and Operators at Toronto, 1907. 

Connections on a switchboard are made by inserting a small plug in a 
small hole above which the number of the telephone requested appears. 
The eye is attracted in the first instance by the glowing of a light which 
announces the call. It has then to immediately find upon the switch- 
board the hole in which it is necessary to insert the plug to make the desired 
connection. Similarly, in disconnecting, the eye detects the extinction 
of the light, and then seeks on the switchboard the number with which 
the connection has been made. This means constant employment of the 
muscles of the eye in different directions, and use of the optic nerve. The 
ear, in receiving calls, is required to distinguish between a multitude of 
different voices, to ascertain at once, and so as to avoid repetition, the 
number asked for, no matter how indistinctly or ill-pronounced the 
number may be; this necessitates constant alertness of the auditory 
nerve, whilst the vocal organs are scarcely less constantly in use in the 
answering of calls, the repetition of numbers, and the conducting of such 
conversations as may be necessary. The sensations created by the work- 
ing of the several senses in this manner, transmit their several messages 
to the brain, which, in turn, directs and governs the actions they suggest. 
The brain is the center of the nervous system. A mere statement of the 
case is sufficient to show that viewed from this point the rapidity or speed 
with which operators are called upon to carry on their work becomes a 
matter of great concern, regard being had to the mental constitution and 
nervous system. (Page 60.) 

Investigation of Telephone Companies by the United States Bureau of Labor. 
Senate Document No. 380. 61st Congress. 2d Session. 1910. 

The operator must have her wits always alert, a quick eye, auditory 
nerves always ready to catch the words of the subscriber for supervisor. 



THE TELEPHONE SERVICE 545 

a steady hand, a pleasant and clear voice, and, first and last, ability to united 
keep her temper unruffled, no matter what happens. Not only must 
she be alert while actively occupied in answering calls, but she must watch 
constantly even when she sees no signal to be answered lest one escape her 
notice. 

This is more readily appreciated when it is remembered that in the 
handling of the simplest form of connection, as above described, there 
are involved eleven processes on the usual type of common battery board. 
First, when attention is attracted by the pilot lamp (the general signal) 
the operator's eyes follow the lines of signals on the terminals on her 
position; (2) this located, she (3) puts the plug into the terminal, (4) 
opens her listening key, (5) asks for number desired, (6) locates that 
number on the multiple, (7) tests the jack to see that the line is not in use, 
(8) inserts her plug, (9) rings the called party. She then (10) must watch 
the signal lamps to see that the called party answers and that connection 
is established. As soon as the lamps relight she must be alert for this 
signal and (11) take down the cords at once. This is the simplest form 
of connection, and these processes — more complicated on the less direct 
forms of connection — are carried on during the entire working day, some- 
times with such rapidity that over 350 connections are made in a busy 
hour. In fact one exchange reported a record of twenty-five calls an- 
swered in two minutes and nine seconds, or an average of 5.16 seconds per 
call. While this speed is nowhere long maintained, or even aimed at as a 
constant standard, there is even at the dullest hour the need of watch- 
fulness lest a signal go unnoticed. This constant alertness for possible 
signals in itself involves continuous strain. (Pages 104-105.) 

Let us watch an operator at her work during the "peak of the load." 
The lines terminating in her position are, we will say, 100, that is 100 
telephone users send their call signals directly in the first instance to her 
position. With each call a light flashes on a signal cap in front of her. 
Several lamps glow simultaneously, showing that a number of users are 
calling for numbers at the same time. She is expected to give all the 
quickest possible service in the order in which their calls come in, but 
when several signals come at once and others come before these can be 
cared for the order of calls is necessarily lost and the effort is concentrated 
merely on clearing the board, or catching up. It must not be forgotten 
that with each signal there is not only the flashing of a small light in the 
operator's eyes, but there is a clicking sound in her ears through the re- 
ceivers fastened to her head. So when the impatient subscriber, angry 
because his call has not been answered, moves the receiver hook of his 
'phone up and down rapidly, he flashes the signal light in front of the 



546 



FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 



UNITED 
STATES 



operator, and produces a click in her ears every time the hook goes up and 
down. The consciousness of numbers of people waiting for call connec- 
tions she is unable to make, and that each one is growing more impatient 
each second; that a supervisor is standing behind her either hurrying 
her or calling her numbers to be taken by other operators; that a monitor 
may plug in and criticise any moment — these, with the height of up- 
reach and length of side-reach, go to form the elements of strain on the 
operator who is "overloaded." (Page 56.) 



(2) Bad Effect on Health 

CANADA Report of the Royal Commission on a Dispute Respecting Hours of Employ- 

ment between the Bell Telephone Co. of Canada and Operators at 
Toronto, Ontario, 1907 . 

Twenty-six medical practitioners gave evidence before the commission. 
The physicians subpoenaed were nearly all selected from the medical 
faculty of the University of Toronto, and were, without exception, among 
the leading members of the profession in the city. (Page 65.) 

Dr. William Britton, practicing thirty-one years, Toronto, representa- 
tive of the University of Toronto and Medical Council, attended employes : 
Many suffering from nervous debility occasioned by the strain of that 
particular work upon the nervous system, which includes the senses of 
hearing, speaking, seeing, and using arms, causing too much strain upon 
the nerve center. ... In a number of cases of young ladies whom I had 
known as the physician of the family, before they entered into the tele- 
phone service and were apparently healthy, after a length of service in the 
telephone office, I had to prescribe for them for various types of nervous 
debility, and my advice to the majority of them was to discontinue the 
work. The constant listening and the keen buzzing means a state of 
tension of the nervous system all the time; fifteen minutes' relief would 
be a very slight one. I have quite often seen nervous hysteria from this 
nervous strain to the telephone girls. (Page 66.) 

Dr. Charles R. Clark, medical superintendent of the Toronto Asylum: 

Work is automatic only to a limited extent. It requires a mental 
effort every time. Nervous strain is intense and would react on the 
physical health in a marked way after three years' service, and might 
pass on to the next generation in a more striking way than even in the 
present generation. 1 am basing that statement on my every-day ex- 
periences with just such cases, having an experience on that kind of thing 
for several years. (Page 72.) 



THE TELEPHONE SERVICE 



547 



Dr. J. M. McCallum, Professor of Therapeutics, and teacher in con- CANADA 
nection with the eye and ear in Toronto University: 

The result of work would be nerve fag and might be a nervous break- 
down. . . . 

We know practically that changes in illumination from dark to light 
do irritate the optic nerve, and that is going on all the time. . . . Flash- 
ing of the light has an irritating effect and is in that way injurious. The 
nerves governing the extra ocular muscles which focus the eye upon the 
object looked upon, are the nerves where the greatest part of the strain 
comes. The sound kept up for hours must have an effect on the auditory 
nerves, and if for long hours, an injurious effect might cause deafness. 
The possibility of receiving shocks would add to the nerve strain, effect 
on vocal organs not much. The effect upon the nervous system is through 
the nerves of the eye and the auditory nerves; reaching is subsidiary; 
operating together causes the difficulty. (Page 72.) 

Dr. Walter McKeown, 16 years' practise in Toronto. Have had tele- 
phone operators as patients suffering from nervous exhaustion. Five hours 
extreme limit for such service with a break in it of an hour. (Page 68.) 

Dr. James M. Anderson, practicing 20 years, Toronto, specialist in 
eye, ear, nose and throat. Treated a number of telephone girls, mostly 
for eye troubles, headache, and nervous troubles. Business of a telephone 
operator is the most trying of any I have ever seen, so far as it affects the 
eyes and through the eyes the general system. Three hours twice a day 
fill safe limit of service, with two hours, at least, rest between the two 
periods. . . . The twenty minutes' relief in the two periods of four hours 
a great deal better than the eight hours with one hour, but not of much 
service. . . . The periods not long enough for rest; five hours divided 
into two periods with an hour for lunch better than any of the other propo- 
sitions, and an operator might do that, but the others would be too great 
a strain upon her. After a service of three or four years would expect to 
find an exhausted womanhood . . . harmful upon the future motherhood. 
(Page 69.) 



(3) Overtime Work 

Investigating of Telephone Companies by the United States Bureau of Labor. 
Senate Document No. 380. 61st Congress, 2d Session, 1910. 

Overtime work is frequent. . . . The practise of requiring overtime is 
attended by hardships. In the first place it means the lengthening by 
one or even two hours of a workday that in itself is not short. 



UNITED 
STATES 



548 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED The hours of work, as well as the character of the work itself, must 

STATES 

be considered in any discussion of nervous and physical strain growing 
out of an occupation. It was shown that relief periods were sometimes 
curtailed, that Sunday work was required twice a month in many com- 
panies, that holidays were difficult to obtain, that hours were not short. 
(Page 33.) 

Overtime seems to be an integral part of the schedule of hours in a 
number of telephone companies. Operators not only are asked to take 
their turn in working extra hours, but in some companies a regular extra 
period is assigned for certain days each week to each operator. She is 
virtually compelled to do this extra work, lest by refusing she incur the 
displeasure of her chief operator or get the reputation of shirking her share 
of work. 

This overtime varies in length from a few minutes to two and one-half 
' hours, one company even posting a list apportioning two nights a week 
to each operator, on which night she must be prepared to work overtime, 
if required. (Page 110.) 

These conditions — curtailment of relief, compulsory overtime work, 
Sunday and holiday work — cannot perhaps be done away with entirely, 
owing to the peculiar conditions of telephone work. That these con- 
ditions could, to a large degree, be modified by the employment of a 
proportionate relief force is shown by the experience of exchanges where 
this is done. In these exchanges overtime comes but seldom, and then 
usually as a result of abnormal number of absences from the operating 
force or of an unexpected load of business on the wires. . . . 

These conditions can be remedied, as is shown by the schedule of sev- 
eral important companies. A small force of extra relief operators would, 
to a large degree, minimize the curtailment of relief periods and the amount 
of overtime required, as well as somewhat reduce the amount of holiday 
work required. While there must always be Sunday and holiday work, 
at least two large companies have discovered that this need not mean seven 
days' work each week. They require their operating force to take one 
day's holiday during the week when Sunday service has been rendered. 
(Pages 111-112.) 

IVomen and the Trades. The Pittsburgh Survey. Elizabeth B. Butler. 
Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publica- 
tion Committee, 1909. 

It would seem that the experience of the Bell Telephone Company in 
one city should not need to be repeated by its own branches or by other 



THE TELEGRAPH SERVICE 549 

companies in other cities. Where the social loss caused by this business united 

STATES 

policy has been so clearly demonstrated, public opinion in a local commu- 
nity should demand a change, so far at least in accordance with the laws of 
health as has been found practicable in Toronto. The human cost to a 
city is too great if before adopting a change in policy the need and the 
practicability of which have already been proved elsewhere, it must re- 
peat the same laboratory experiment with the nerve cells of its young girls. 
(Pages 291-292.) 

E. The Telegraph Service 

Women and the Trades. The Pittsburgh Survey. Elizabeth B. Butler. 
Russell Sage Foundation Publication. New York, Charities Publica- 
tion Committee, 1909. 

The main office of a telegraph company impresses the uninitiated ob- 
server but does not enlighten him. . . . You see men and women, row 
back of row, receiving, sending, writing messages. You hear the inter- 
mittent click of the telegraph keys, the banging of typewriters, and you 
are conscious of a steady undercurrent of haste, concentration, quick 
efficiency. . . . Managers and operators as a rule agree that the lesser 
physical strength of women tells against them after several years of light 
wrist and finger motions; that because of this lesser strength, women have 
neither the speed nor the accuracy of mon; and that they get "glass 
arm," a nervous inability to work, more frequently. (Pages 292-293.) 

F. Work in Hotels and Restaurants 

Recent government investigation has shown the duration 
of working hours of waitresses.* 

These statistics show that many employers employ wait- 
resses less than ten hours in one day and sixty hours in one 
week. But the practice of other employers of requiring 
hours of labor so long as to be dangerous to health proves 
the necessity of the ten-hour law for women employed in 
hotels and restaurants. 

The differences between work in hotels and in boarding 

*This section was part of the Brief in defense of the Illinois Act of 1911; 
hence the hours of labor in Illinois are quoted. They are typical of all large 
cities, as well as of Chicago. 



550 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED houses justifies the inclusion of the former, and the exclusion 

STATES 

of the latter from the scope of the ten-hour law. 

Report of Condition of IVoman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States. 
Vol. V. Senate Document No. 645. 61st Congress. 2d Session. 1910. 

Waitresses are employed to work in shifts, according to the number 
of meals they serve, and in different cities there are different names applied 
to these shifts. . . . For purposes of tabulation they have been divided 
into groups of girls who serve three meals, girls who serve two meals, 
and girls who serve one meal per day. ... In the average number of 
hours of actual labor per week the time allowed the girls for eating their 
meals is deducted as well as any time during the day they may have "off 
duty," i. €., time during the day in which they may leave the restaurant 
entirely. The three-meal girls often have from two to three hours "off 
duty" in the afternoon, when there is little business being done in the res- 
taurant. The girls serving three meals usually begin work at 6, 7, or 8 
o'clock in the morning and work until the corresponding hours in the 
evening. The two-meal girls work from 9, 10, or 11 o'clock in the morn- 
ing until 7, 8, or 9 o'clock at night, and they seldom have any time "off 
duty." In a few cases where girls worked all night they are included with 
the three-meal girls. (Pages 191-192.) 

There was much complaint among the waitresses that the work was 
very hard and they could stand it but a few years. A number of the girls 
interviewed had worked as three-meal girls until their health was broken; 
then they took positions as one-meal girls and barely made a living. 
Carrying the heavy trays and the constant standing or walking cause ill 
health. Usually a man is employed to carry away the empty dishes, but 
the waitress must bring the trays loaded with food. (Chapter X, MS 
Page 199.) (See table on opposite page.) 

Labor Laws and Their Enforcement with Special Reference to Massachusetts. 
Edited by Susan B. Kingsbury. New York, Longmans, Green and 
Co., 1911. 

In fourteen of the fifteen restaurants where we worked, conditions were 
worse from a standpoint of health than in any other class investigated. 
There was a marked lack of cleanliness and long and irregular hours were 
almost universal. ... In one of the fifteen restaurants almost every law 
for the protection of the health of employes was violated. The kitchen 
was unclean, walls and ceilings black with smoke, grease and cobwebs. 
Odors arose from the sink and refuse was allowed to collect for days in 
uncovered barrels. Here flies and vermin were the most in evidence, 



Women Employed AS Waitresses in 


Hotels and Restaurants, Chicago 


Three-meal Girls 


Two-meal Girls 


Number 


Average 

Weekly 

Hours of 

Labor 


Av. W'kly 

Rate of 

Pay, with 

Meals 


Number 


Average 

Weekly 

Hours of 

Labor 


Av. W'kly 
Rate of 

Pay, with 
Meals 


a1 


70t\ 

68A 

57^ 

55 

48 

57 

54 

ic) 

58>^ 

65 

66>^ 

585^ 

51 

68>^ 

66^ 

51 

78 

64f 

63i 

55>^ 

S1H 

66K 

49^ 

60 

67K 

61^ 

67>^ 

5H 

62 

84 

ny2 

57 

58>^ 

80>^ 

70 

56f 

72i 

85K 

66 

60 

55K 

63H 

45 

63 


$9 86 
8 75 
8 00 
7 00 
7 00 
7 00 
7 00 

7 00 

8 50 
8 00 
8 00 
7 00 
7 00 

7 00 

8 00 
8 00 

7 00 

8 60 

9 00 
7 00 
7 00 
9 00 
7 00 
7 00 

7 77 

8 00 

7 00 

8 47 

8 00 

9 00 

7 00 

8 00 

7 00 

8 83 
8 00 
8 00 
8 25 
8 00 
8 20 
7 00 

7 00 

6 50 

8 00 

7 00 

8 20 


12 


45 
48 
42 

53/e 

45 

39 

40>^ 

46>^ 

54^ 

41>^ 

56 

57^ 

42 

43^ 

18 

39 

49^ 

52>^ 

56 

SVA 

42 

51 

52K 

49 

57 

21 

45 

48 

36 

42 

28^ 


$7 25 


^4 


66 


7 00 


5 


12 


5 00 


aS 


13 


6 92 


10 


15 


7 00 


8 


32 


6 50 


10 


2 


7 50 


2 


12 


7 00 


14 


14 ... 


7 57 


6 


24 


6 50 


2 


4 


6 00 


10 


2 


7 00 


2 


4 


7 00 


2 


3 


7 00 


3 


4 


3 00 


8 


18 


6 50 


26 


11 


7 57 


^5 


1 


7 00 


6 


2 


6 00 


2 


6 


6 00 


1 


3 


6 50 


2 


13 


7 00 


4 


2 


6 00 


2 


1 


8 00 


9 ... 


22 


7 00 


6 


6 


4 00 


2 


176 


5 50 


/15 


55 


6 73 


6 :::::::::::::: 


2 


6 00 


^3 


4 


7 00 


i::::::::::::::. 


5 


5 00 


^4 






3 




6 


. 


2 




4 

4 




3 




5 




2. ... 




3 




10 




8 




8 




30 









UNITED 
STATES 



a Two are all night waitresses. 
c Not reported. 

g Work all night. 
551 



e One works all night. 

/ All or part serve at night. 

(Page 359.) 



552 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED although receptacles for bread and crackers were also infested. One 

STATES . . . . ■ 

kitchen was ventilated by one small window and one door, with no screens 
for either. Added to the discomfort, the men in kitchen were frequently 
smoking and spitting. The toilet was dirty and dark with no provision 
for ventilation except from the door, but it was not situated in the kitchen, 
as was the case in three restaurants where we worked. The total number 
of hours that I worked at this place was sixty-six per week and I was not 
on an exceptional schedule for the other waitresses worked as long. The 
hours of cooks and servers were even longer. (Pages 154-155.) 

Brief of Griffin and Yanckwich in the Supreme Court of the State of Cali- 
fornia. [In the Matter of the Application of Frank A. Miller /<?r a 
IVrit of Habeas Corpus.] July, 1911. 

In hotels the work of chambermaids is both injurious and unpleasant. 
The work of keeping hotels clean compels chambermaids to come into 
contact with linen used by diseased persons, and to inhale air exhaled 
by diseased persons. The work of waitresses is arduous; the waitresses 
are compelled not only to stand on their feet most of the time, but to walk. 
It has been estimated that a waitress working ten hours a day walks twenty 
miles. (Page 89.) 

Brief of Denman and Arnold in the Supreme Court of the State of California. 
[In the Matter of the Application of F. A. Miller for a Writ of Habeas 
Corpus.] July, 1911. 

We have a clear judicial expression that women's hours of labor may 
be limited for the prevention of any of the following purposes: 

1. Injury to the woman herself, (a) by long standing on her feet in 
any occupation, (b) by physical or mental strain due to the long con- 
tinuance at or confinement in any single occupation, (c) by worry and 
anxiety in the competition to secure and hold place, a worry and excite- 
ment greatly increased during her periodical semi-pathological condition. 

2. Injury to her offspring as a result of physical or mental injuries to 
herself, or by bringing contagion home to her children. 

3. Her absorption in gainful occupation to the detriment of the rear- 
ing and education of her children. 

4. Her occupation in these employments to the detriment of the 
maintenance of the home. 

5. The likelihood of her submitting to oppressive conditions in her 
employment, due to her inferior nervous and physical capacity to cope 
with her employer. • 



WORK IN HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS 553 

The question then is: Can this Court say beyond a reasonable doubt, united 
that none of these evils exist or are likely to exist to a greater degree in ^^^ ^ 
the public institution of the ordinary hotel, than in the private institu- 
tions of the lodging and boarding house? Unless it can say that the 
equality of amount or kind of danger in the two classes, does not even 
seem dubious it must uphold the law. 



The Difference Between the Possible Evils to Women in the Hotel, a 
Public Institution Open to All Travelers, and in Boarding or Lodg- 
ing Houses, Private Institutions, Which Are Not. 

It was suggested that the fact that the hotel is a public institution to 
which all travelers customarily go and the lodging or boarding house is a 
private institution to which travelers go but infrequently, would not 
warrant a different health law for one than for the other. 

It is of course true that some low boarding or lodging houses may 
present more unsanitary conditions than the average hotel. But this 
is no more true than that some private schools are less sanitary as far as 
contagion is concerned than the public. 

The hotel is distinguishable from the boarding house by much more 
than the dry legal incident of the power of the keeper of the latter to 
choose his guests. An examination of the consequences flowing from 
the public character of the hotel or inn ip so far as they affect the woman 
employe, shows that they are vital in their nature. 

In the first place with regard to communicable disease. The hotel 
chambermaid must handle the soiled bed linen and perform other inti- 
mate services for the traveling guests. The hasty arrival and short stay 
of the traveler make it impossible that there shall be any attempt to segre- 
gate the diseased from the healthy, save in very obvious cases. The con- 
sumptive, the typhoid patient, the syphilitic, the children with all their 
contagious diseases, are hurried up to their rooms and are off again the 
next day, quite likely traveling to reach hospitals or medical treatment. 

It is the women in the hotel who are chiefly exposed to the danger 
of contagion from these sources. Is it not reasonable to suppose that 
the number of exposures to disease a chambermaid will receive from 
the very large number of travelers in hotels, will greatly exceed the number 
among the less changeable occupants of boarding and lodging houses? 
Can this Court say beyond a reasonable doubt that the danger from 
contagion is not greater in the former class than in the latter? Even if 
the Court should think that the distinction is a dubious one, is it in pos- 
session of the facts upon which to determine the relative danger? Or is 
it not plain that this question of degree is one for the Legislature? 



554 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED A court may take judicial notice that making up a bed is the same 

whether it is in a hotel or a boarding house. But will it therefore take 
judicial notice of the relative number and kind of disease germs, the ad- 
mittedly different classes and numbers of persons who frequent the two 
different kinds of places of entertainment, leave upon such bed linen? 

Take again the matter of disease germs arising from sweeping carpets. 
It is common knowledge, amongst chambermaids at least, that the traveler 
is more filthy in his habits of expectoration and the use of common con- 
veniences as well as bed linen, than the permanent boarder or lodger. 
The instinct not to foul his own nest exerts no pressure on his inclinations 
where he knows he is leaving his room not to return. Has the Court any 
common knowledge — can it take judicial notice of such conditions? We 
submit that from the very fact of their unpleasant and repellant nature, 
such matters do not become of common knowledge and hence that the 
Legislature alone is the proper forum for their determination. 

What has been said applies to the risk of disease to the woman herself. 
We must remember, however, that the courts have clearly settled that 
the Legislature may enact laws to protect her in her maternal relationship. 
Not only is she subject to danger to herself from diseases of mature per- 
sons, but she is liable to bring the contagion of children's diseases into her 
family. Can this Court say beyond a reasonable doubt that this risk is 
not greater in hotels than in boarding houses? Can it say beyond a reason- 
able doubt that the worn and exhausted woman hurrying home after ten or 
twelve hours of work will not take less precaution to prevent this spreading 
of disease than her fresher sister after but eight hours? The Court may 
say this is dubious, but it must then resolve the doubt in favor of the law. 

But entirely apart from the question of contagious diseases, there is 
another manner in which the health of woman may be differently affected 
in hotel work from that of the private institution. The hotel must re- 
ceive its guests at all hours of the day and night, and in the average com- 
mercial hotel there is a continual current of guests arriving and leaving. 
Every member of this Court at some time in his career must have been 
compelled to wait at a crowded hotel even in the late hours of the evening, 
till his room, just vacated by a departed guest, has been made up. This 
means in all likelihood irregular extra work for the chambermaid in addi- 
tion to the day's regular quota. Can this Court say beyond a reasonable 
doubt that this difference is one on which the people through their Legisla- 
ture can not make a distinct classification? 

Again, the average commercial hotel, much of its time, is only partially 
filled and for purposes of economical management its supply of servants 
is based only on its average number of guests. Any increased work is 
absorbed by the regular force. This exposes the woman in the hotel 



WORK IN HOTELS AND RESTAURANTS 555 

employ to an extra strain and increased hours of labor, to which the far united 
greater regularity of those institutions not catering to the traveler are ^'^^'^^S 
not subject. Perhaps the Court may say this is not a matter of which 
the Court can take judicial notice, but that is not the criterion. Can the 
Court take judicial notice that the facts are not as stated? It seems a 
reasonable enough condition of fact and if dubious, the classification must 
be deemed to have been constitutional. 

The courts have recognized in woman's inferior capacity for com- 
petitive bargaining, a basis of remedial legislation. Can it be said beyond 
a reasonable doubt that the hotel keeper will not, from time to time, 
impose more onerous conditions of excessive hours and strain on his 
women employes than the boarding or lodging house keeper? Will not 
the irregularity and sudden strains necessarily incidental to hotel keeping, 
tend to drive him to compel a more oppressive kind of service from his 
women than the landlord of the boarding house with his more regular 
and calculable business? Can this Court say such a ground of distinction 
is not even dubious? Unless it can the law must stand. 

In concluding, we submit that each of the above distinctions presents 
sufficient reason to sustain the Legislature in its classification. When 
all are considered together, the classification no longer seems even dubious. 
In fact, if there is any reasonable doubt, it would seem to be as to the 
reasonableness of any one who would contend that there was no ground of 
distinct classification between the hotel and other places of lodgment. 



On the Right of the Legislature to Choose the Point of Cleavage in 
Classification When the Occupations Gradually Merge from One 
Class into Another. 

It is apparent that there are some points of resemblance between the 
hotel, the large boarding house, the small boarding house, the family 
taking several boarders the year round, the farmhouse with its two or 
three summer boarders, and the family with one "parlor" guest. For 
instance, both travelers and steady boarders have property which they 
leave under the protection of the landlord. Hence, we find a common 
law for both hotel and boarding house keepers in the matter of the pro- 
tection of property. 

On the other hand, the law expects that the body of travelers will go 
to the hotel and not the boarding house, and makes it a crime for the 
former, but not the latter, to refuse his hospitality to such transient guests. 
(Penal Code, 365.) 

Some large boarding and lodging houses approach very closely to the 
hotel in the duties of its employes. The line between these boarding 



55^ FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

UNITED houses, with their more complex organization and those in which the sim- 

STATES 

pier organization is more nearly allied to family life, is one impossible to 
be drawn with scientific accuracy. Certainly the Court can not take 
judicial notice of any sharp line of cleavage; and yet as certainly can it be 
said that the Legislature has the power of placing the dividing line some- 
where in the succession. 

So also with the hotel which entertains the great bulk of travelers and 
the boarding houses which entertain the great bulk of permanent guests. 
The classification in so far as the danger to woman is concerned is, as we 
have shown, a reasonable one, and the very difficulty of placing it any- 
where else in the line between the hotel and the home with its parlor 
boarder "gives evidence itself that it is a reasonable class distinction." 



G. Employment hy a Common Carrier 

Recent government investigation has shown that before 
the ten-hour law was enacted, women employed by the 
elevated railways in Chicago were obliged to remain at their 
posts twelve hours in the day, and seven days in the week. 

Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor. No. 91. Nov., 1910. Working 
Hours of Wage-Earning Women in Chicago. Woman Ticket Agents 
of the Elevated Railways.* 

The elevated railway companies of Chicago employ 284 regular woman 
agents and an average of about 100 "extras." The regular agents work 
from 7 A. M. to 7 p. m. — 12 hours a day, for 7 days a week. There is no 
allowance whatever for an occasional afternoon off, or for a Sunday or a 
legal holiday. If a girl desires such leave she makes request and an 
"extra" is sent to relieve her, the "extra" receiving the full rate of pay 
which is deducted from the regular agent's wage. It is quite common for 
an agent to ask for a half day off on a legal holiday — as Christmas or 
Thanksgiving — and the "extra" called upon to substitute must respond 
whenever called, for, while these extras are not necessarily employed 
continuously (in the case of one company the average earnings of extras 
amounts to ^35.00 per month each), they must be prepared to respond 
promptly; otherwise the chances are that they will not be considered 
desirable as regulars. 

* The tabulation of information from the transportation companies not only 
covers the two years previous to January 1, 1910, but represents conditions in 
September and the early part of October, 1910. (Page 869.) 



EMPLOYMENT BY A COMMON CARRIER 



557 



The lunch hour brings no relaxation, for the girl must bring her lunch, 
or send for it, and it is eaten at her station as opportunity occurs. Some 
of the agents have appliances for heating coffee, etc. 

A majority of the roads have a "relief agent" who is constantly travel- 
ing, stopping off to relieve the agents along the line for 10 or 15 minutes 
morning and afternoon. On the lines where there is no relief agent the 
girl must call upon the colored porter to take her place during a necessary 
temporary absence. . . . The morning hours are generally busy ones for 
the agent, but there are several hours during the day where in most dis- 
tricts the work is very light, and except for the fact that the girl must 
remain at her station she may make herself very comfortable, often find- 
ing time for fancy work or a magazine, the only stipulation being that she 
shall not neglect her duty. 

The real strain comes during the last two hours of the working day 
when the girl is least prepared to meet it, from 5.00 to 6.30 or 7.00 p. m., 
when the exodus from offices, stores and factories keeps the agent nerved 
to highest effort to keep up with the insistent demands of waiting patrons. 

The manager of one of the roads describes the successful agent as the 
one who, under sometimes very trying circumstances, maintains perfect 
self-control. Her occupation necessarily places her in contact with all 
classes and conditions of people, and by the exercise of self-control and 
tact many an unpleasant situation is averted. The management particu- 
larly desires the agents to avoid anything like conflict. (Pages 880-881.) 

The following table shows for each railway the number of women regu- 
larly employed, with the daily and weekly hours of work and rates of pay: 



UNITED 
STATES 



Number of Woman Agents in the Service of the Elevated Rail- 
roads OF Chicago, with Hours of Labor and Rates of Pay 



Company Number 


Number 
of IVomen 
Regularly 
Employed 


Hours 
per Day 


Days per 

Week 


Hours 

per 

Week 


Pa\ 

Day 


' PER 

Week 


1 


100 
64 

45 
24 
51 


12 
12 
12 
12 
12 


7 
7 
7 
7 
7 


84 
84 
84 
84 

84 


$1 90 
1 95 
1 90 
1 70 

al 00 


$13 30 


2 


13 65 


3 


13 30 


4 


11 90 


5 


&14 00 






Total 


284 


12 


7 


84 


$1 91 


$13 39 







a $1.70 during first year; agents at 3 department stores $1.75 each, and relief 
agents $1.60. 

h After working 1 year at $1.70 per day. 



OPINION OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE 
UNITED STATES 

In the Case of Muller v. State of Oregon 
Delivered by Mr. Justice Brewer, February 24, 1908 

On February 19, 1903, the legislature of the State of Oregon passed an 
act (Session Laws, 1903, p. 148) the first section of which is in these words: 

"Sec. 1. That no female (shall) be employed in any mechanical es- 
tablishment, or factory, or laundry in this State more than ten hours 
during any one day. The hours of work may be so arranged as to permit 
the employment of females at any time so that they shall not work more 
than ten hours during the twenty-four hours of any one day." 

Section 3 made a violation of the provisions of the prior sections a mis- 
demeanor, subject to a fine of not less than $10 nor more than $25. On 
September 18, 1905, an information was filed in the Circuit Court of the 
State for the county of Multnomah, charging that the defendant "on 
the 4th day of September, a. d. 1905, in the county of Multnomah and 
State of Oregon, then and there being the owner of a laundry, known as 
the Grand Laundry, in the city of Portland, and the employer of females 
therein, did then and there unlawfully permit and suffer one Joe Haselbock, 
he, the said Joe Haselbock, then and there being an overseer, superin- 
tendent and agent of said Curt Muller, in the said Grand Laundry, to 
require a female, to wit, one Mrs. E. Gotcher, to work more than ten hours 
in said Laundry on said 4th day of September, a. d. 1905, contrary to the 
statutes in such cases made and provided, and against the peace and 
dignity of the State of Oregon." 

A trial resulted in a verdict against the defendant, who was sentenced 
to pay a fine of $10. The Supreme Court of the State affirmed t)ie con- 

558 



OPINION IN MULLER V, OREGON 559 

viction (48 Ore. 252), whereupon the case was brought here on writ of 
error. 

The single question is the constitutionality of the statute under which 
the defendant was convicted so far as it affects the work of a female in a 
laundry. That it does not conflict with any provisions of the State con- 
stitution is settled by the decision of the Supreme Court of the State. The 
contentions of the defendant, now plaintiff in error, are thus stated in his 
brief: 

"(1) Because the statute attempts to prevent persons, sui juris, from 
making their own contracts, and thus violates the provisions of the Four- 
teenth Amendment, as follows: 

'"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privi- 
leges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; 
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the 
laws.' 

"(2) Because the statute does not apply equally to all persons simi- 
larly situated, and is class legislation. 

"(3) The statute is not a valid exercise of the police power. The 
kinds of work prescribed are not unlawful, nor are they declared to be im- 
moral or dangerous to the public health; nor can such a law be sustained 
on the ground that it is designed to protect women on account of their sex. 
There is no necessary or reasonable connection between the limitation 
prescribed by the act and the public health, safety, or welfare." 

It is the law of Oregon that women, whether married or single, have 
equal contractual and personal rights with men. As said by Chief Justice 
Wolverton, in First National Bank v. Leonard, 36 Ore. 390, 396, after a 
review of the various statutes of the State upon the subject: 

"We may therefore say with perfect confidence that, with these three 
sections upon the statute book, the wife can deal, not only with her sep- 
arate property, acquired from whatever source, in the same manner as 
her husband can with property belonging to him, but that she may make 
contracts and incur liabilities, and the same may be enforced against her, 
the same as if she were a feme sole. There is now no residuum of civil 
disability resting upon her which is not recognized as existing against the 
husband. The current runs steadily and strongly in the direction of the 
emancipation of the wife, and the policy, as disclosed by all recent legis- 
lation upon the subject in this State, is to place her upon the same footing 
as if she were difeme sole, not only with respect to her separate property, 
but as it affects her right to make binding contracts; and the most natural 
corollary to the situation is that the remedies for the enforcement of lia- 



560 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

bilities incurred are made co-extensive and co-equal with such enlarged 
conditions." 

It thus appears that, putting to one side the elective franchise, in the 
matter of personal and contractual rights they stand on the same plane as 
the other sex. Their rights in these respects can no more be infringed 
than the equal rights of their brothers. We held in Lochner v. New York, 
198 U. S. 45, that a law providing that no laborer shall be required or 
permitted to work in bakeries more than sixty hours in a week or ten 
hours in a day was not as to men a legitimate exercise of the police power 
of the State, but an unreasonable, unnecessary, and arbitrary interference 
with the right and liberty of the individual to contract in relation to his 
labor, and as such was in conflict with, and void under, the Federal Con- 
stitution. That decision is invoked by plaintiff in error as decisive of the 
question before us. But this assumes that the difference between the 
sexes does not justify a different rule respecting a restriction of the hours 
of labor. 

In patent cases counsel are apt to open the argument with a discussion 
of the state of the art. It may not be amiss, in the present case, before 
examining the constitutional question, to notice the course of legislation as 
well as expressions of opinion from other than judicial sources. In the 
brief filed by Mr. Louis D. Brandeis, for the defendant in error, is a very 
copious collection of all these matters, an epitome of which is found in the 
margin.* 

* The following legislation of the States impose restriction in some form or 
another upon the hours of labor that may be required of women: Massachusetts, 
1874, Rev. Laws 1902, chap. 106, sec. 24; Rhode Island, 1885, Acts and Resolves 

1902, chap. 994, p. 73; Louisiana, 1886, Rev. Laws 1904, vol. i, sec. 4, p. 989; 
Connecticut, 1887, Gen. Stat, revision 1902, sec. 4691; Maine, 1887, Rev. Stat. 

1903, chap. 40, sec. 48; New Hampshire, 1887, Laws 1907, chap. 94, p. 95 ; Maryland, 
1888, Pub. Gen. Laws 1903, art. 100, sec. 1; Virginia, 1890, Code 1904, tit. 51 a, 
chap. 178 a, sec. 3657 b; Pennsvlvania, 1897, Laws 1905, No. 226, p. 352; New 
York, 1899, Laws 1907, chap. 507, sec. 77, subdiv. 3, p. 1078; Nebraska, 1899, 
Comp. Stat. 1905, sec. 7955, p. 1986; Washington, Stat. 1901, chap. 68, sec. 1, 
p. 118; Colorado, Acts 1903, chap. 138, sec. 3, p. 310; New Jersey, 1892, Gen. 
Stat. 1895, p. 2350, sees. 66 and 67; Oklahoma, 1890, Rev. Stat. 1903, chap. 25, 
art. 58, sec. 729; North Dakota, 1877, Rev. Code 1905, sec. 9440; South Dakota, 
1877, Rev. Code (Penal Code, sec. 764), p. 1185; Wisconsin, 1867, Code 1898, sec. 
1728; South Carolina, Acts 1907, No. 233. 

In foreign legislation Mr. Brandeis calls attention to these statutes: Great 
Britain, 1844. Law 1901, 1 Edw. VII, chap. 22; France, 1848, Act Nov. 2, 1892, 
and March 30, 1900; Switzerland, Canton of Glarus, 1848, Federal Law 1877, art. 
2, sec. 1; Austria, 1855, Acts 1897, art. 96 a, sees. 1 to 3; Holland, 1889, art. 5, 
sec. 1; Italy, June 19, 1902, art. 7; Germany, Laws 1891. 

Then follow extracts from over ninety reports of committees, bureaus of statis- 
tics, commissioners of hygiene, inspectors of factories, both in this country and in 
Europe, to the effect that long hours of labor are dangerous for women, primarily 
because of their special physical organization. The matter is discussed in these 



OPINION IN MULLER V. OREGON 561 

While there have been but few decisions bearing directly upon the ques- 
tion, the following sustain the constitutionality of such legislation: 
Commonwealth v. Hamilton Mfg. Co., 125 Mass. 383; Wenham v. State, 65 
Neb. 394, 400, 406; State v. Buchanan, 29 Wash. 602; Commonwealth v. 
Beatty, 15 Pa. Sup. Ct. 5, 17; against them in the case of Ritchie v. People, 
155 111. 98. 

The legislation and opinions referred to in the margin may not be, 
technically speaking, authorities, and in them is little or no discussion of 
the constitutional question presented to us for determination, yet they 
are significant of a widespread belief that woman's physical structure, and 
the functions she performs in consequence thereof, justify special legisla- 
tion restricting or qualifying the conditions under which she should be 
permitted to toil. Constitutional questions, it is true, are not settled by 
even a consensus of present public opinion, for it is the peculiar value of a 
written constitution that it places in unchanging form limitations upon 
legislative action, and thus gives a permanence and stability to popular 
government which otherwise would be lacking. At the same time, when a 
question of fact is debated and debatable, and the extent to which a 
special constitutional limitation goes is affected by the truth in respect to 
that fact, a widespread and long continued belief concerning it is worthy 
of consideration. We take judicial cognizance of all matters of general 
knowledge. 

It is undoubtedly true, as more than once declared by this court, that 
the general right to contract in relation to one's business is part of the 
liberty of the individual, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the 
Federal Constitution; yet it is equally well settled that this liberty is 
not absolute and extending to all contracts, and that a State may, without 
conflicting with the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment, restrict in 
many respects the individual's power of contract. Without stopping to 
discuss at length the extent to which a State may act in this respect, we 
refer to the following cases in which the question has been considered: 
Allgeyer v. Louisiana, 165 U. S. 578; Holden v. Hardy, 169 U. S. 366; 
Lochner v. New York, supra. 

reports in different aspects, but all agree as to the danger. It would of course take 
too much space to give these reports in detail. Following them are extracts from 
similar reports discussing the general benefits of short hours from an economic 
aspect of the question. In many of these reports individual instances are given 
tending to support the general conclusion. Perhaps the general scope and char- 
acter of all these reports may be summed up in what an inspector for Hanover says: 
"The reasons for the reduction of the working day to ten hours — (a) the physical 
organization of woman, (b) her maternal functions, (c) the rearing and education of 
the children, (d) the maintenance of the home — are all so important and so far- 
reaching that the need for such reduction need hardly be discussed." 
36* 



562 FATIGUE AND EFFICIENCY 

That woman's physical structure and the performance of maternal 
functions place her at a disadvantage in the struggle for subsistence is 
obvious. This is especially true when the burdens of motherhood are 
upon her. Even when they are not, by abundant testimony of the medi- 
cal fraternity continuance for a long time on her feet at work, repeating 
this from day to day, tends to injurious effects upon the body, and as 
healthy mothers are essential to vigorous offspring, the physical well- 
being of woman becomes an object of public interest and care in order to 
preserve the strength and vigor of the race. 

Still again, history discloses the fact that woman has always been de- 
pendent upon man. He established his control at the outset by superior 
physical strength, and this control in various forms, with diminishing in- 
tensity, has continued to the present. As minors, though not to the same 
extent, she has been looked upon in the courts as needing especial care that 
her rights may be preserved. Education was long denied her, and while 
now the doors of the school-room are opened and her opportunities for 
acquiring knowledge are great, yet even with that and the consequent 
increase of capacity for business affairs it is still true that in the struggle 
for subsistence she is not an equal competitor with her brother. Though 
limitations upon personal and contractual rights may be removed by 
legislation, there is that in her disposition and habits of life which will 
operate against a full assertion of those rights. She will still be where 
some legislation to protect her seems necessary to secure a real equality of 
right. Doubtless there are individual exceptions, and there are many 
respects in which she has an advantage over him; but looking at it from 
the viewpoint of the effort to maintain an independent position in life, 
she is not upon an equality. Differentiated by these matters from the 
other sex, she is properly placed in a class by herself, and legislation de- 
signed for her protection may be sustained, even when like legislation is not 
necessary for men and could not be sustained. It is impossible to close 
one's eyes to the fact that she still looks to her brother and depends upon 
him. Even though all restrictions on political, personal, and contractual 
rights were taken away, and she stood, so far as statutes are concerned, 
upon an absolutely equal plane with him, it would still be true that she is 
so constituted that she will rest upon and look to him for protection; that 
her physical structure and a proper discharge of her maternal functions — 
having in view not merely her own health, but the well-being of the race — 
justify legislation to protect her from the greed as well as the passion of 
man. The limitations which this statute places upon her contractual 
powers, upon her right to agree with her employer as to the time she shall 
labor, are not imposed solely for her benefit, but also largely for the benefit 



OPINION IN MULLER V. OREGON 563 

of all. Many words cannot make this plainer. The two sexes differ in 
structure of body, in the functions to be performed by each, in the amount 
of physical strength, in the capacity for long-continued labor, particularly 
when done standing, the influence of vigorous health upon the future well- 
being of the race, the self-reliance which enables one to assert full rights, 
and in the capacity to maintain the struggle for subsistence. This dif- 
ference justifies a difference in legislation and upholds that which is de- 
signed to compensate for some of the burdens which rest upon her. 

We have not referred in this discussion to the denial of the elective 
franchise in the State of Oregon, for while that may disclose a lack of 
political equality in all things with her brother, that is not of itself de- 
cisive. The reason runs deeper, and rests in the inherent difference be- 
tween the two sexes, and in the different functions in life which they per- 
form. 

For these reasons, and without questioning in any respect the decision 
in Lochner v. New York, we are of the opinion that it cannot be adjudged 
that the act in question is in conflict with the Federal Constitution, so far 
as it respects the work of a female in a laundry, and the judgment of the 
Supreme Court of Oregon is 

Affirmed. 
True Copy. 

Test: 

JAMES H. McKENNEY, 

Clerk, Supreme Court, U. S. 



INDEX 



Abbe, Ernst, The Economic Signif- 
icance of a Shorter Working Day: 
adequate resting-time, 112; mo- 
notony, 46; need of rest, 94; over- 
time output impaired, 437-438; 
shorter hours and output, 359-363; 
state's economic loss from over- 
work, 239; stupefying effect of 
monotonous labor, 326 

Abbotts, W.: future generations, ef- 
fect of women's work in, 261; 
saleswomen, 509-510; standing in- 
jurious to female functions, 521,522 

Abrams, Mary E.: lead-poisoning, 10 

Accidents: hours of incidence, 192- 
213 

Adler, Geo., International Labor Leg- 
islation: bad effect of long hours on 
health, 126; necessity of state in- 
terference with hours of work, 331; 
still-births in Miilhausen, 273 

AiKENS, Austin. See Ford 

Alfassa, Georges, Night Work for 
Women: girls' dangers, 428; loss of 
sleep, 423; overtime work of sew- 
ing girls, 539; street dangers for 
women at night, 431 

"Alfred." See Kydd, Samuel 

Alienist and Neurologist, vol. xxi: ner- 
vous fatigue, 78 

Alsace: infant mortality, 274. See 
also Elsass 

American Academy of Political and 
Social Science, Annals: speed in 
manufacture, 40-41; state's need 
of preserving health, 245-246; 
stimulants of the tired worker, 
235-236 

American Economic Association Quar- 
terly: reduced hours not reduced 
product, 375 

American Institute of Instruction: 
fatigue, 62; self control, loss 
through fatigue, 226-227 



Ames, Fanny B.: Fitchburg bicycle 
balls factory, efficiency with shorter 
hours, 371-372; ten-hour law, origin 
in England, 337; testimony as to 
number of looms tended, 37 

Anemia: fatigue and, 90; working- 
women in Germany, 19; from long 
hours, 413; saleswomen, 512, 518, 
523 

Anderson, Miss A. M. : employment of 
mothers in factories and effect on 
offspring, 262-263 

Annals of the German Empire. See 
German Empire, Annals 

Ansiaux, Maurice, Night Work for 
Women in Industry in Foreign 
Countries: dressmaking, etc., over- 
time, 543-544; increase of em- 
ployment of women, 392-393; long 
hours in Austria, 416; overtime, 
prohibition and better organiza- 
tion, 450; overtime wages, 459. See 
Belgium, Minister of Commerce 

Anti-toxin of fatigue. See Toxin of 
fatigue 

Archiv fiir Anatomie und Physiologic, 
1890: fatigued muscles, 89-90; 
Maggiora, A., on the laws of fatigue, 
73-74; muscular fatigue, 85-86. 

Arena, The: wages and hours of labor, 
406-407 

Arlidge, J, T., The Hygiene, Diseases, 
and Mortality of Occupation: arti- 
ficial limit needed in factory labor, 
330; monotony, 43-44; bad ef- 
fects of long hours on health, 121- 
122; diseases incident to long 
standing, 138, 145 

Arlt, Ilse von. Night work of Women 
in Industry in Austria: loss of sleep, 
423; morbidity, 14; night work in 
Austria and its evils, 418-419; night 
work in establishments other than 
factories, 540; over-strain, 425; 
overtime wages, 459. See Bauer 



565 



566 



INDEX 



Arnold, Mrs. Wm., translator. See 
Brentano, Lujo 

AscHER, Dr., Protection of Working 
Men: adequate resting- time, iii- 
112, 114; infectious diseases, 161; 
intemperance, 230-231; injuries of 
occupation, strain on special or- 
gans, 150, 152; leisure of the la- 
borer, its use and misuse, 304; 
shorter hours, 325-326 

Ashley, Lord: accidents and fatigue, 
202; benefits of reduced hours in 
Yorkshire and Lancashire, 296; 
children of weakened women, 263; 
efl&ciency, increase of, 346, 351; 
evil effects on women of standing, 
135-136; exhaustion of a 12-hour 
day, 118; race degeneration, 276, 
277 

Athletic Training. See Training 

Attention: fatigue of, 213-220 

Australia: benefit of short working 
hours, 299 



Babes, V., The Attitude of States to 
Modern Bacteriological Investiga- 
tion: state and individual health, 

240-241 

Baden: long hours in laundries, 123; 
shorter hours, 356 

Baker, Henry S., The Relation of 
Fatigue to Social and Educational 
Progress: attention and will, fa- 
tigue of, 220; nature of fatigue, 62; 
self control, loss through fatigue, 
226-227 

Barrows, Alice P., The Training of 
Millinery Workers : hours and con- 
ditions in New York City, 531-533 

Barry, Sir David : deterioration of de- 
scendants of factory workers in 
Scotland, 260-261; ill health of 
mill workers, 117; speed of manu- 
facture, 26; swollen feet and legs of 
Scotch mill workers, 144 

Baudoin, L., Labor Legislation for 
Women and Children in Italian In- 
dustry: sewing-machine, 128-129 

Bauer, E., Night Work of Women in 
Industry, 14, 16, 25, 265-266, 272, 
343-344, 359, 391, 410, 416-417, 



Bauer, E. {continued) 

418-419, 423, 425, 428-429, 437, 
439, 459, 470-471, 540 

Bebel (representative in German 
Reichstag): on shorter hours for 
women, 6-7, 324; shorter hours the 
remedy, 324 

Beelitz Sanitarium, Berlin: 49, 171, 
179; ages of neurasthenic patients, 
1 8 2-1 83 ; inherited taints , 1 84-1 85 ; 
statistics, 173, 174; use of stimu- 
lants, 231 

Belgium: Higher Council of Labor, 70, 
99, 295, ZZ2,-2>ZA, 382 
Labor Commission, 2,3,3 
Minister of Commerce, Report to, see 
Ansiaux, M. 

Bell Telephone Co., Canada, 30, 248; 
character of business, 544; long 
hours, 415; overtime bad econ- 
omy, 436 

Belloc, L.: sewing-machine, 128-129 

Benefit to Society of Shorter Hours 
OF Work: 290-302 

Benzacar, J.: streets dangerous for 
women at night, 431 

Berlin: ages of neurasthenic patients, 
182-183; bad effects of long hours 
on health, 122, 123; Beelitz sani- 
tarium, 171, 173, 174; continu- 
ance at work during illness, 21; 
dressmakers' morbidity, 17-18; 
home industries, morbidity, 17-18; 
laundries, 122; morbidity, 13; Old 
Age and Invahdity Department, 49 ; 
tailoring trades, morbidity, 17-18 

Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift: ner- 
vous fatigue, 74-75 
Bertillon, J.: mortaUty, 23 
BiBROwicz, W. See Leubuscher, P. 
Bicycle Balls: testing, 371-372 
Biedermann: fatigue, 58 

BiNDEWALD, George, The Arms-bear- 
ing Capacity of Country and City 
Populations: race degeneration, 283 

BiNSWANGER, Otto, Pathology and 
Therapeutics of Neurasthenia: age 
of incidence, 181-182; chronic fa- 
tigue, 189; nervous diseases and 
heredity, 183; overstimulation, 
186; state's need of preserving 
health, 238 



INDEX 



567 



Birmingham, Eng.: benefit of shorter 
hours, 291; brass works hours, 352 

Bolton, Eng., 277 

Black, Clementina, London Tailor- 
esses: value of evening lesiure, 316 
Sweated Industry and the Minimum 
Wage, overtime high wage, 463 

Blizard, Sir Wm.: injurious effect of 
standing, 143; light and easy work 
exhausting if prolonged, 318-319 

Bluhm, Agnes, Hygienic Care of Work- 
ing Women and their Children : fu- 
ture generations, health, 265; pro- 
tective laws and their reasons, 248 

Blundell, James: accidents and fa- 
tigue, 202; fatigue of standing, 
142-143; physical differences be- 
tween men and women, 2 

Boarding Houses: long hours in, 549- 
550, 553-556 

Bocci: eye fatigue, 149 

Bolen, Geo. L., Getting a Living: last- 
hour work, 384 

Bookbinding, 484; for women, 394, 
399; not necessarily a seasonal 
trade, 451 

Borderland Problems of Nervous and 
Psychic Life: nervous diseases and 
heredity, 183-184; nervous fatigue, 
75, 76; state's need of preserving 
health, 239-240. See also Kurella 

Bosch, Esteve de. The Weekly Rest 
Day: fatigue charts, 109, no 

Boston Vocation Office for Girls, Bul- 
letin: millinery, 537 

Boston Women's Educational and 
Industrial Union, Studies, etc.: 
dressmaking, 537, 541-542; mil- 
linery, 533-536, 541 

Bourguin, M. : progressive reduction of 
the hours of labor, 242 

Bradford, Eng.: domestic picture of 
factory workers, 312-313; func- 
tional diseases among women op- 
eratives, 136-137; infant mortal- 
ity, 27s; Medico-Chirurgical So- 
ciety, 118; varicose veins, etc., 
144-145 

Brassey, Thos.: Foreign Work and 
EngHsh Wages : increased employ- 
ment of women in the increased re- 
strictions, 387-388 



Brassey, Thos. (continued) 
Lectures on the Labor Question: ef- 
ficiency, 350-351 

Breckinridge, S. P., Legislative Con- 
trol of Women's Work: future 
generations and health of mothers, 
268-269 

Brentano, Lujo, Hours and Wages in 
Relation to Production: efficiency, 
357; efficiency as related to length 
of working day, 378-379; race de- 
generation, 283 
The Relation of Labor to the Law of 
To-day: higher standard of living 
in laborers, 303-304 

Bridges, J. H.: female functional dis- 
eases, 136-137; infant mortality, 
270; varicose veins, 144-145 

British Association for the Advance- 
ment OF Science : infant mortahty, 
271 ; leg diseases among laundresses, 
145-146; overtime bad economy, 
435, 442; restricted hours benefi- 
cial, 453; restriction an encourage- 
ment to the head employers, 472; 
wages of women, 401; women not 
displaced by men through restrict- 
ive legislation, 390 

British Columbia Royal Labour 
CoManssiON, Reports: speed in 
manufacture, 30 

British Medical Journal: standing and 
pelvic troubles, 135 

British Sessional Papers: accidents 
and fatigue, 202, 203; adequate 
resting-time, 113; air in shops at 
night, 419-422; bad effect of long 
hours on health, 1 16-120; benefit 
to society of shortened hours, 290- 
294; customers' adaptation to 
shorter hours, 407-408; domestic 
duties of working women, 253-254; 
dressmaking, 537-539, 542-5431 
efficiency, increase, 347-349; em- 
ployment of women and children 
for cheapening labor, 247 ; evening 
leisure and its benefits, 310-316; 
eye fatigue, 149; family life, 426; 
female functions and child-birth, 
^35 J 136-137; future generations, 
effect of women's overwork on, 
260-263; general predisposition to 
diseases, 156-157; improvements 



568 



INDEX 



British Sessional Papers {continued) 
in manufacture, 385; increased em- 
ployment of women with increased 
restrictions, 387; infant mortality, 
269-270; injuries to legs and feet 
from long standing, 142-145; in- 
temperance, 227, 228-229; irregu- 
larity of labor result of overtime, 
451-452; laundry work and its 
effect on health, safety and morals, 
493-495, 498-499; legislation, 
necessity, 328-330; light and easy 
work fatiguing if prolonged, 318; 
long hours, 411-415; mercantile 
estabhshments, conditions and 
health, 509-512; millinery, 587- 
589, 542-543; monotony, 43; 
moral benefit of shortened hours, 
288-289; night work and spoiled 
work, 375-376, 377; output im- 
paired by overtime, 433-434, 44o- 
441; overstrain, 424; overtime 
prohibition, 444-447; overtime 
unnecessary, 480-484; overtime 
wages, 456-457; physical differ- 
ences between men and women, 1-5 ; 
race degeneration, 278-279; regu- 
lation a benefit to trade, 340-343; 
saleswomen's long hours and health, 
5 1 5-5 20 ; shopping earlier, 530-531; 
speed of manufacture, 26, 27; 
standing and female functions, 520- 
525; streets and night, dangers for 
women, 431; uniformity of re- 
striction, 464-469, 474-478; wages 
of women as affected by restricted 
hours, 395-399 

Brodie, Benjamin Collins: diseases 
of legs and feet from long standing, 
143 

Broggi, Ugo: fertility of women in in- 
dustry, 273-274 

Brown, Elizabeth Stowe, The Work- 
ing Women of New York: light 
work injurious if prolonged, 322 

Buisson, Etienne, The Eight-hour 
Day: augmentation of output with 
shortened hours, 365 

Bulley, a. a., Women's Work: do- 
mestic duties, 254; overtime need- 
less and injurious, 469; speed of 
manufacture, 27; standing, injury 
of, 525 

Burckhardt, a. E. See Schuler, F. 



Butler, Elizabeth B., Saleswomen in 
Mercantile Stores: nature of oc- 
cupation, 509 
Women and the Trades: evening 
work bad economy, 440; monot- 
ony, 47-48; moral weakening due 
to fatigue, 227; saleswomen, con- 
ditions of work, 508; speed in 
manufacture, 41-42; telephone 
and telegraphy service, 548-549 

Buyers. See Customers 



Cadbury, Edw., M. Cecile Mathe- 
son, and George Shann, Women's 
Work and Wages: industrial con- 
ditions and women's health, 247; 
long hours produce inferior qual- 
ity of output, 435; monotony, 45; 
overtime prohibition, steadying 
effect of, 453-454; women not 
displaced by men, 392 

California Supreme Court, 552-556 

Campbell, L. R., The Restriction of 
the Hours of Labor: ten-hour pro- 
duction equal to eleven-hour, 370 

Canada Labour Gazette, August, 1903: 
speed in manufacture, 30 

Carlisle, Sir Anthony: bad effect of 
long hours on health, 117; light 
and easy work may be exhausting, 
318; on physical differences be- 
tween men and women, 3 

Carrieu, M., Fatigue and its Patho- 
genic Influence: 59, 106-107; pre- 
disposition to diseases, 158-159 

Case for the Factory Acts, The, ed- 
ited by Webb : improved processes 
of manufacture, 386; improvement 
of shorter hours in textile trades 
and coal mining, 294; moral con- 
ditions in unregulated industries, 
222; race degeneration, 279-280; 
regulation a benefit, 452-453; 
standardization of conditions, 469, 
478-479, 485-486; state's right 
to control public welfare, 237; 
women not likely to be driven out 
of employment, 388 

Cassel, Germany: bad effect of long 
hours on health, 125 

Celli, Antonio, The Conflict between 
Hygiene and Industry: infectious 
disease, 162 



INDEX 



569 



Chambermaid, 552, 553-555- See also 
Hotels 

Charities and Commons, Injury of Long 
Hours at Light Work, 323 

Chazal, a.. The Prohibition of Night 
Work for Women in French In- 
dustry: family hfe and overtime, 
428 

Chemical Works: accidents, 194; 
Durlach experiment, 354 

Chemical Workers: intemperance, 
228-229 

Chemnitz: infant mortality, 273 

Chicago: laundries, 490-491; ticket 
agents on elevated railways, 556- 
557; waitresses, conditions, hours, 
wages, etc., table, 551 

Chicago Mercantile Establish- 
ments: Christmas rush, 503-505, 
513; hours of labor, 499-505, 513; 
shopper's adaptation to shorter 
hours, 529; U. S. Bureau of Labor, 
Bulletin, 500-504, 513, 529; U. S. 
Congress, Senate Document, 500, 
504-505, 513 

Childbirth. See Female functions, 
etc. 

Child Labor. See National Child 
Labor Committee, etc. 

Christmas Rush in Mercantile Estab- 
Hshments, 503-505, 5 13 

Church, Archibald, and Peterson, 
Frederick, Nervous and Mental 
Diseases: occupation spasms, 154- 
155 

Church, Wm. S.: anaemia from long 
hours, 413, 520; injury of gas and 
foul air at night, 421-422; long 
hours more fatiguing than severity 
of labor, 320; saleswomen, long 
hours injurious, 511 

Civic Federation. See National Civic 
Federation 

Clark, V. S., Woman and Child Wage- 
earners in Great Britain: factory 
legislation, public opinion as to, 
300-301; increase since 1820 in 
women's wages, table, 405-406; 
legislation, its need and value in 
improving labor conditions, 338; 
regularity of employment, 455- 
456; uniform conditions, 473-474 



Clarke, Allen, The Effects of the 
Factory System : monotony, 44-45 ; 
speed of manufacture, 27 

Clarke, S. A., and Edith Wyatt, Mak- 
ing Both Ends Meet: laundries, 
497 

Coal-mining: benefits of shorter hours, 
294 

Collet, Miss: 518, 522 

Colorado Bureau of Labor Statis- 
tics, Report: domestic duties of 
women workers, 258; laundries, 
490 

Committee of One Hundred on Na- 
tional Health, Bulletin: 79-80 

Common Carrier: 556-557 

Compendium of Political Science. 
See Handworterbuch der Staats- 
wissenschaften 

Competition: between men and wom- 
en, 388, 392; short-hour states vs. 
long-hour states, 369, 3 72-3 73 » 
378, 379, 3^3 

Compositors: 7; 141-142: neuras- 
thenia among, 172, 176 

Concordia, Zeitschrift der Zentral- 
stelle fiir Volkwohlfahrt, Nov. i, 
1907: need of rest, 94-95 

Congress of Hygiene, etc. See In- 
ternational Congress of Hygiene 

Congress, U. S. See U. S. Congress 

Congressional Record: McKinleyon 
the Eight-hour Bill, 429-430 

Connecticut Bureau of Labor Sta- 
tistics: benefit of shorter hours, 
297; comparative efi&ciency of 
English, Russian, German and 
French labor, 369 

Conrad, J. See Compendium, etc. 
Consciousness of Fatigue. See 
Nervous Fatigue 

Consumers' League of the City of 
New York, Report: Christmas 
overtime, 505; legislation, 526; 
saleswomen, 507, 526 

Consumers' Leagues. See Interna- 
tional Conference, etc. 

Continuance at Work During Ill- 
ness. 20-22 



570 



INDEX 



CoRNEiLLE, P., The Eight-hours Day: 
intemperance from excess of labor, 
233; temperance improvement, 
289-290 

Cotton Mills: accidents, hours of, 
210, 211; Fall River, intemper- 
ance, 234; increase in England, 
342; Lancashire, improvement, 
294; Massachusetts increase with 
shorter hours, 345 ; regulation and 
wages, 402; Swiss morbidity, 11, 
12, 17; women in, Great Britain, 
394 

CowLES, Edw., The Mental Symptoms 
of Fatigue: attention, fatigue of, 
220; fatigue anaesthesia, 187; fa- 
tigue, normal and pathological, 
60-61; neurasthenia and its char- 
acter, I 91-19 2 

Cox, Harold. See Webb, Sidney, etc. 

Crisafulli, Prof., ImbeciHty and 
Criminality in Relation to Certain 
Forms of Labor: alcohol and fa- 
tigue, the double poisoning of, 233; 
family life, 429; future generations 
and overworked mothers, 267; 
mental fatigue and overwork, 191; 
monotony, 46-47; moral weaken- 
ing due to fatigue, 223-224; pro- 
tection of women and children, 250 

Customers, adaptation to shorter hours, 
407-411,528-531 



Dammer, Otto, See Handhuch 
Decurtius, Dr.: infant mortality, 274 
Degeneration. See Race Degenera- 
tion 
Demography. See International Con- 
gress of Hygiene 
De Moor, Jean: attention, fatigue of, 

219; special overstrain, 154 
Denis, Hector, Proposals regarding 
Limitation of Hours of Work for 
Adults in Belgium: fatigue con- 
sciousness, 70-71; legislation, need 
of, 334; state's power to regulate, 
242-243 
Denman and Arnold, 552-556 
Dennis, John, The Pioneer of Progress: 
bad effect of long hours on health, 
121 
Department Stores, 500-504 



Despeaux, M.: street dangers for 

young girls, 430 
Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift: 

piece work, 49 
Diseases, General Predisposition to 

from fatigue: 155-160. See also 

Morbidity; Infectious Diseases; 

Nervous Diseases 

Dodd, Wm., The Factory System: evil 
effect on offspring of women work- 
ers, 263 

DoLAN, Thomas M., Infant MortaHty: 
death rate of children of factory 
workers, 271-272 

DoLFUSS, M.: shorter day experiment, 
350-351, 379 

DoLPHUS, Jean: infant mortality, 271- 
272 

Domestic Duties of Working Wom- 
en, 252-260 

Double Burden of Working Women. 
See Domestic Duties 

Dressmaking, 537-544 
Drummond, Margaret. See Mosso 
Drummond, W. B. See Mosso 
Du Bois-Reymond: fatigue, 57 
Dudley, Dr.: infant mortality, 271 
Duncan, James: temperance increased 

with reduced hours, 287-288 
Dundee: infant mortality, 275 
Duration of Illness, 15-20 
DuRLACH, 354 



Early Closing Association : 516,517; 
inadequacy of, 330, 526 

Early Closing Bill: petition, 515- 

516, 519 
EccARius, Geo. J., Hours of Labor: 

death rate and overwork, 121 

Economic Aspect of Regulation of 
Working Hours, 339-441. See 

Regulation 

Economic Journal, The: efficiency, 352; 
family life, 427; monotony, 46; 
overtime and organization, 447, 
448; overtime bad economy, 442; 
speed of manufacture, 28; value of 
evening leisure, 316; women in 
paper mills, 391-392 



INDEX 



571 



Efficiency Increased by Shorter 
Hours, 345-375; Abbe, E., 359- 
363; age of workers, 361; Ameri- 
can Economic Association Quarterly, 
375; Ames, Fanny B., 371-372; 
Ashley, Lord, 346; automatic ad- 
justment of the individual, 361; 
Baker, R., 349-35°; Baden, 356; 
Bauer, E., 359; bicycle balls, 371- 
372; Birmingham brass works, 352; 
Brassey, T., 350-351; Brentano, 
L., 357; British Sessional Papers, 
347-349; Buisson, E., 365; Camp- 
bell, L. R., 370; Canada, 353; 
cheerfulness, value of, 347, 352, 
357; Connecticut Bureau of Labor 
Statistics, 369; continuity of work 
with reduced hours, 367; Dolfuss, 
M-j 350-351; Economic Journal, 
352; eleventh-hour work, 366, 367; 
Enghsh labor compared with Rus- 
sian, German and French, 369, 
379; Fall River mills' voluntary 
reduction of hours, 367; France, 
365-366; Frankfort on the Main, 
356; Fuchs, Dr.,359; Gardner, R., 
347; Germany, 353-364; Gray, 
Wm., 366-367; Great Britain, 346- 
352; Handbook of Hygiene, 358; 
Herkner, H., 358; Hesse, 356; 
Holbrook, J., 374; Holland, 357; 
Homer, L., 348-349, 350; human 
element in amount of output, 365; 
Hutchins, B. L., 352; improved 
condition of workers with reduced 
hours, 367; increase in the short 
hours unreahzed by those concerned, 
361; increased production with 
shortened day^ instances, 361, 363, 
365; International Association of 
Factory Inspectors of North Amer- 
ica, 370, 374; International Con- 
ference in Relation to Labor Legis- 
lation, 357; Jeans, V., 351-352; 
Lawrence, Mass., 367; Leroy, M., 
365-366; Lilwall, J., 349; limit of 
tension, 351-352; Maine Senate 
Document, 366; Massachusetts 
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 366, 
368; Massachusetts Chief of 
Pohce, 368-369, 371; Massachu- 
setts Senate Documents, 367-368; 
Michigan Bureau of Labor, 370; 
Mill ward, H., 350; New York De- 
partment of Labor, 372; New 
York State Factory Inspector, Re- 



Efficiency Increased by Shorter 
Hours (continued) 
port, 369, 370; optimum, 363; out- 
put as a measure of worker's 
strength, 362; Pennsylvania Fac- 
tory Inspector's Report, 370; 
Pieper, A., 359; Pringsheim, O., 
357; Rae, J., 352; recuperation, 
363; Revue de Paris, 365-366; 
Revue Socialiste, 365; Roth, E., 
358; Salford Iron Works, 373, 379; 
Schaefer, Dr., 358; Shaftesbury, 
Lord, 351; short-hour nations vs. 
long-hour nations, 369, 372-373> 
378; Shuey, E. L., 374; Smith, 
Adam, 351; speed, 362; Switzer- 
land, 353, 363-364; ten-hour law 
in Massachusetts, 366-367; Toroles, 
J. K.,375; United States, 366-375; 
U. S. Commissioner of Labor, Re- 
port, 373; U. S. Congress, 373; U. 
S. Industrial Commission, Report, 
371-372, 372-373; Walker, F. A., 
3 74 ; Wisconsin Bureau of Labor Sta- 
tistics, 373; Worms, Germany, 356; 
Wurttemberg, 354-355, 356-357 

Efficiency Reduced by Long Hours, 
375-384; Belgian Higher Council 
of Labor, 382; Belgium, 382; Bo- 
len, G. L., 384; Brentano, L., 378- 
379; British Sessional Papers, 375- 
376, 377; EUesmere, Earl of, 376- 
377; France, 380-381; German 
Factory and Mine Inspector's Re- 
ports, 378; Germany, 378-379; 
Great Britain, 375-378; GrUlet, 
M., 380-381; Hansard's Parlia- 
mentary Debates, 376-377; Helle- 
putte, M. G., 382; Italy, 383; 
Kennedy, J. L., 375-376; Lan- 
cashire, Eng., 375-376; Martin, R., 
382-383; Massachusetts Bureau of 
Statistics of Labor, 383 ; Massachu- 
setts Chief of District Police, Re- 
port, 384; Mundella, Mr. 378; 
Night work, 375-376; Nitti, F. S., 
383; Oxford, Bishop of, 377; Rae, 
J-, 377-378; Riviere, M., 380; 
Smith, v., 376; spoiled work, 375- 
376,377; Swiss Factory Inspectors' 
Reports, 382; Switzerland, 382- 
383; United States, 383-384 

Eight-hour Day, 37, 38 
Eight-hour Law: New York state, 
336-337 



572 



INDEX 



Electric-lamp Industry: monotony, 
39-40; piecework, 51-52 

Electric Works, i 79-181 

Elevated Railways, 556-557 

Eleven-hour Day, 355 

Eleventh-hour Work, 132; 355; 366, 
367 

Ellesmere, Earl of: spoiled work due 
to long hours, 376-377 

Elliottson, John : light and easy work 
fatiguing if prolonged, 319 

Elli^, Havelock, Man and Woman: 
physical differences between men 
and women, 6 

Elsass-Lothringen: bad effect of long 
hours on health, 126 

Elster, L. See Compendium 

Employment of Women as affected by 
regulation: Ansiaux, M., 392-393; 
Bauer, E., 391; Belgian minister 
of Commerce and Labor, Report 
to, 392-393; Belgium, 392-393; 
Brassey, T., 387-388; British 
Association for the Advancement of 
Science, 390; British Sessional 
Papers, 387; Cadbury, E., 392; 
Case for the Factory Acts, 388; 
competition with men, 388, 392; 
Economic Journal, 391-392; Ger- 
many, 393, 394; Great Britain, 
387-392; Hutchins, B. L., 390, 
391-392; Journal of the Royal 
Statistical Society, 389-390; La- 
bour Laws for Women, 388; more 
regular when overtime is prohib- 
ited, 450-456; Pieper, A., 394; 
proportion of women in industry, 
394-395; Saxony, 393; textile in- 
dustries, 389, 393; United States, 
394-395; U. S. Bureau of Labor, 
Bulletin, 394; various industries 
employing women in Great Britain, 
1861-1901, 394-395; where de- 
mand is greatest, 392; Wood, G. 
H., 389-390, 391 

Encyclical on the Labor Problem, 
quoted, 96 

Encyclopedia of Hygiene and Pub- 
lic Medicine: morbidity and 
duration of illness, 16-17 

Engels, Frederick, Condition of the 
Working Class in England in 1844: 
monotony, 44; pelvic diseases, 138 



Erb, Wilhelm, The Increase of Ner- 
vousness in our Times: neuras- 
thenia among the poor, 170; neu- 
rasthenia and fatigue, 188-189 

Ergograph, 71, 73, 74, 80, 81-83; de- 
scription, 81-83, 88 

Ergographic Curve, 87 

Erismann, Dr. : evils of night work, 418 

Evening Leisure: special benefit of, 
310-317 

Evening Work After Day Work, 
417-419 

Eyesight: injuries from long hours, 
148-151, 420 

Exemptions from regulative laws. See 
Uniformity of restriction 



Fall River: cotton industry, 479; 
cotton mills, intemperance, 234; 
mills' reduction of hours, 367 

Family Life, 426-430 

Fatigue, 52-64; American Institute 
of Instruction, Sixty-fifth Annual 
Meeting, 62; Baker, Henry S., 62; 
Beard, 61; Biedermann, 58; Brus- 
sells Congress of Hygiene, 1903, 54; 
Carrieu, M., 59; Compendium of 
Political Science, vol. L, 54-55; 
Cowles, Edw., 60-61; Du Bois- 
Reymond's discovery, 57; Fletcher, 
55; Gautier's experiments, 57, 59; 
general medical views, 52-64; Gep- 
pert, 58; Harvey lectures, 63; Her- 
ing, 58; Herkner, H., 54-55; Her- 
zen, 59-60; increase, rate of, 90- 
91; International Congress of Hy- 
giene and Demography, 54, 55-56, 
58-59; Kraus, 55, 58; Kronecker, 
55; Lagrange, 60; Lavoisier, 56; 
Lee Frederic S , 63-64; Mosso, A., 
56-57, 64; New York Bureau of 
Labor Statistics, 62-63; New York 
State Medical Association, 60-61; 
Oliver, Thomas, 53-54; passive, 
"waste of power," 362-363; 
Ranke, 55, 57; Roth, Emil, 55-56; 
Sachnine, Ilia, 59-60; Sequin, 56; 
Tissie, 60; Treves, Zaccaria, 58- 
59; Zuntz, Dr., 54, 58. See also 
Accidents; Attention; Fatigued 
muscles; Muscular fatigue; Ner- 
vous diseases; Nervous fatigue; Rest; 
Toxin of fatigue 



INDEX 



573 



Fatigued Muscles: greater strain 
upon, 88-93 

Favill, Henry B., The Federal Chil- 
dren's Bureau: state's interest in 
the physical well-being of the 
people, 246 
Industrial Hygiene and the Police 
Power: health and labor, relation, 
244; mandatory measures best in 
labor reform, 338 

Feet and Legs: injuries from long 
standing, 142-148 

Felix, Jules, The Influence of Working 
Hours on the Conditions of Health 
of Working People: need of rest, 

lOI 

Female Functions and Childbirth, 
135-142, 520-525 

Fere, Chas., Work and Enjoyment: 
attention and memory, fatigue of, 
218; fatigue, effect of, 214; in- 
fectious diseases, 163; maximum 
muscular work, 86; moral weakness 
due to fatigue, 224 

Fish-curing Trade: exemption from 
law, 468 

Fisher, Irving: national vitality and 
fatigue, 79-80 

Fitch, John A., The Steel Workers: 
intemperance, 236 

Fitchburg, Mass. : bicycle ball factory, 

371-372 
Flat Foot: from long standing, 142, 

143, 145, 146, 147, 514-515, 520 
Fletcher: fatigue, 55 

Florence, Italy: industrial accidents, 
209 

Forel, August, Hygiene of Nerves and 
Mind in Health and Disease: ner- 
vous hygiene of women, 7 

France: 

Chamber of Deputies, Debates, etc.: 
industrial degeneration, 280-281; 
intemperance, 232; long hours of 
working women, 415; overtime 
wages, 457; overtime work, 439; 
streets at night dangerous, 430 

Factory Inspectors' Reports: dress- 
making and millinery, overtime, 
539; exemption from and abuses of 



France : 

Factory Inspectors' Reports {con- 
tinued) 

restrictive laws, 469-470; over- 
time bad economy, 440, 443 ; over- 
time prohibition, 449; overtime 
wages, 458; regularity of employ- 
ment, 454 
Labor Ofi&ce, Bulletin: increased pro- 
duction per hour with shortened 
day, 365 
Minister of Commerce, Reports to: 
family life, 427-428; lack of sleep, 
injury of, 422-423; street dangers 
for young girls, 430 
Senate, Parliamentary Documents, 
etc.: domestic duties of women 
workers, 258; hours of work for 
women, 249-250; long hours for 
working women, 415-416; over- 
time wages, 457-458 

Frankfort: continuance at work 
during illness, 1896, 21, 22; dura- 
tion of illness, 18, 19; shortened 
hours, 356 

Frankfort a. d. Oder: health of wom- 
en in textile mills, 34 

Freiberg, Albert H., Some Effects of 
Improper Posture in Factory La- 
bor: fatigue and injury of stand- 
ing, 147-148; standing occupa- 
tions, 514-515 

FucHS, Dr.: efficiency increased by 
shorter hours, 359 

Future Generations, effect of wom- 
en's overwork on, 260-269. See 
also Race Degeneration 



Gardner, Robert: efficiency, increase, 
347 

Gaskell, p.. Artisans and Machinery; 
The Moral and Physical Condition 
of the Manufacturing Population: 
miscarriages of factory women, 137 

Gautier: fatigue, experiments, 57, 59 

Gehrig, F., The Results of Child Labor 
as judged from the Physicians' 
Standpoint: diseases peculiar to 
women from sitting and standing, 
140 

Geppert: fatigue, 58 



574 



INDEX 



Germany: 

Factory and Mine Inspectors' Re- 
ports: accidents, 207, 208; bad 
effect of long hours on health, es- 
pecially in laundries, 125, 126; 
benefit of shorter hours for women, 
316; domestic duties, additional 
burden to women workers, 255- 
257; effect of long hours, 7; feet 
and leg diseases from long standing, 
146; future generations' depen- 
dence on protection of women work- 
ers, 265; intemperance, 230; laun- 
dry overstrain, 424-425; legisla- 
tion, necessity, 332; light work if 
prolonged is exhausting, 321; long 
hours and health, 122-124, 125; 
long hours disappearing, 378; 
moral weakening of fatigue, 224; 
nervous diseases, 168; overtime 
and output, relation, 436; race 
degeneration, 282; reduction of 
working day for women and rea- 
sons, 249; shortening of hours de- 
sired by operatives, 323-325; 
shorter day output, quantity and 
quaHty, 353-357; speed in manu- 
facture, 32-33, 34; streets at night, 
432; tailoring trade statistics of 
illness, 17-18; uterine diseases, 138- 
139; "voluntary overtime," 487 

German Empire, Annals: legislation, 
necessity, 331; long hours, bad 
effects on general health, 126 

Imperial Labor Statistics: overtime 
prohibition, 449 

Reichstag, Proceedings: danger of 
race degeneration through wom- 
en's work, 264-265; infant mor- 
tality, 273; morbidity of women in 
Switzerland, 12; legislation, neces- 
sity, especially for women, 331-332; 
prolonged labor of any kind in- 
jurious and should be regulated, 
320-321; race degeneration, 281- 
282 ; shorter day output, 353 ; short- 
er hours for women, 6-7; shorter 
hours the remedy, 324 

Statistics of the German Empire: 
sickness insurance, 1906, 20 
GiBBiNS, H. DE B. See Had field, R. A. 
GiGLiOLi, G. Y., New Researches and 
Acquisitions in the Pathology and 
Hygiene of Labor: infectious dis- 
eases, 162-163; neurasthenics of 
labor, 168-169 



Glasgow : bad ^ect of long hours, 119- 
120 

Glass Bottle Blowers' Association 
OF America: speed in manufacture, 
41 

Gledden, Dr. : bad effect of long hours 
on general health, 133 

Glycogen, 84 

Goethe: eye fatigue, 148-149 

GoMPERS, Samuel: overtime wages and 
work, 460 

GONNARD, R., Woman in Industry: 
improved methods of manufacture, 
386; overtime high wage, 463 

Graham, Sir James: conversion to 
shorter-hour legislation, 298-299 

Graham-Rogers, C. T.: on physical 
structure of women, 9 

Gray, Wm.: argument for Ten-Hour 
Law in Mass., 366-367 

Green, Jos. Henry: adequate resting- 
time, 113; air at night in shops, 
420; fatigue of standing, 144; 
physical differences between men 
and women, 3 

Griesberts, Herr: legislation, need of, 
335 

Griffin and Yanckwich, 552-553 

Grigg, W. Chapman: long hours, 
standing, and women's diseases, 
524 

Grillet, M., The Effect of Shorter 
Hours on Production: relation of 
hours and output, 380-381 

GuNTON, George, The Economic and 
Social Importance of the Eight- 
Hour Movement: leisure and re- 
creation needed, 308 
The Eight-Hour Day: saloon and 
laborer, 235; shorter hours, neces- 
sity, 328; speed in manufacture, 40 
Wealth and Progress: shorter hours, 
necessity, 328 

GuTERGOTZ, 171 

Guthrie, James: fatigue of standing, 
144; physical differences between 
men and women, 3-4; sight injured 
by evening work, 420 

Guy, Wm. Augustus, The Case of the 
Journeymen Bakers: bad habits 
due to fatigue, 229-230; moral 
benefits of shortened hours, 289 



INDEX 



575 



Hadfield, R. a., and Gibbins, H. de 
B., A Shorter Working Day: ben- 
efits of the Factory Acts, 343; fac- 
tory workers in the past, 279; in- 
ventions, 385-386; uniformity of 
regulation, 478 

Haegler, Dr.: weekly rest day, 100, 
105, 106; charts, 109-110 

Handbook of Hygiene. See Hand- 
huch der Hygiene; Weyl, T. 

Handbuch der Arbeiterwohlfahrt 
(Handbook of the General Welfare 
of the Working Classes) : adequate 
resting-time, 111-112, 114; eye 
fatigue, 150; feet and leg diseases, 
147; infectious diseases, 161; in- 
temperance and prostitution from 
fatigue, 230-231; leisure for the 
laborer, use and misuse, 304; 
shorter hours the remedy, 325-326; 
strain on special organs, 152. See 
Dammer, Otto. 

Handbuch der Hygiene: adequate 
resting-time, in; bad effect of long 
hours on general health, 126; dura- 
tion of illness, 17; efi&ciency of 
early hours of day, 358; future 
generation, health of, 265; in- 
dividual power of resistance to dis- 
ease, 159-160; length of working 
time the important point in trades, 
321-322; protective laws for wom- 
en in industry, 248; race regenera- 
tion from shorter hours, 295; state 
and industrial hygiene, 238 

Handworterbuch der Staatswissen- 
schaften (Compendium of Polit- 
ical Science): fatigue, 54-55, 76- 
77, 83-84, 92-93; intemperance, 
232; leisure, family, public and 
social hfe for the laborer, 304; need 
of rest, 96-97, 103-104, 115; over- 
time prohibition, 454; restriction 
an encouragement to best employ- 
ers, 472-473; state's need of pre- 
serving health, 240, 284 

Hansard's Parliamentary Debates: 
accidents and fatigue, 202; domes- 
tic duties of working women, 253; 
ej65ciency, increase of, 346 ; exhaus- 
tion of a 12-hour day, 118; female 
functional diseases, 135-136; in- 
temperance due to fatigue, 228; 
long hours and reduced efficiency. 



Hansard's Parliamentary Debates 
(continued) 
376; moral improvement with 
shorter hours, 288; overtime pro- 
hibition and regularity of labor, 
450-451; race degeneration, 276- 
277; state and industry, 237 

Hardwicke, Wm.: need of rest, 102 

Harrison, Amy. See Hutchins, B. L. 

Harvey Lectures, Fatigue: muscular 
fatigue, phenomena, 87-88; na- 
ture of fatigue, 63-64; need of rest, 
103; nervous fatigue, 78-79; toxin 
of fatigue, 69. See Lee, Frederic S. 

Haste. See Speed of Manufacture 

Hawkins, Dr.: female functional dis- 
eases, 135; intemperance among 
factory workers, 227 

Health, General Injury to: special 
diseases and injuries, 1 16-135, See 
Evening work, etc.; Long hours; 
Overstrain 

Heart Disease : Berlin working people, 
175-176 

Heffter, Werner, Industrial Hygiene 
and the Prevention of Accidents: 
special overstrain, 152 

Helleputte, M. G., Regulation of 
Hours of Work for Adults: curve 
of work, 382; good results of short- 
er hours, 295; private initiative 
and legislation, 333-334 

Helmholtz, H. von: myograph, 81; 
rapidity of perception, 214-215 

Heredity. See imder Nervous diseases 

Hering: fatigue, 58 

Herkner, H., Handworterbuch der 
Staatswissenschaften: Belgian 

studies, 10; fatigue, 54-55; speed 
in manufacture, 35 
Hours of Work: accidents, hours of, 
206; fatigued muscles, greater 
strain on, 92-93; intemperance, 
232; leisure, family, public and 
social life for the laborer, 304; mus- 
cular fatigue, 83-84; need of rest, 
96-97, 103-104; nervous fatigue, 
76-77; overtime prohibition, 454; 
resting time in injurious occupa- 
tions, 115; restriction an encour- 
agement to best employers, 472- 
473; state's need of preserving 
health of its people, 240, 284 



576 



INDEX 



Herkner, H. {continued) 

The Labor Question: legislation vs. 
voluntary organization and vs. 
industrial war as a means of short- 
ening hours, 332 
The Problem of Labor: efficiency, 358 
Social Reform as a Condition of 
Socio-Political Progress: miUtary 
recruiting in factory regions, 282- 
283 

Herzen: fatigue, 59-60 

Hesse: shorter hours, 356 

Heym: duration of illness, 20 

HiRSCH, Max, Prohibition of Night 
Work of XVomen in Germany: dis- 
eases due to long hours, 416-417; 
evils of evening work, 418; family 
life, 428-429; future generations, 
health, 265-266; morbidity, 12; 
overtime^ bad economy, 437. See 
Bauer, E. 

HiRT, LuDwiG, The Diseases of Work- 
ing People: poisonous trades, 10; 
prolonged sitting or standing the 
injurious element, 321 

HoBSON, John A., Problems of Poverty: 
domestic duties, additional burden 
of, 254; family life, 427; state's 
need of preserving health of women, 
247 
The Problem of the Unemployed: 
leisure and its benefits, 302-303 

Hodge, C. F.: experiments as to exer- 
cise, 77, 78; need of Sunday rest, 
226-227 

HoDGKiN, Thos.: fatigue of standing, 
143; need of rest, 113 

Hoffman, August, The Choice of Oc- 
cupation and Nerve Life: nervous 
diseases and heredity, 183-184 

Hoffmann, Frederick L., Physical 
and Medical Aspects of Labor and 
Industry: value to the state of 
workingmen's health and efficiency, 
245-256 

Holbrook, John, The Shorter Work- 
day and its Effect upon the Per- 
sonal Character of the Worker: 
intemperance, 235; leisure and its 
employment, 309-310; reduction 
of hours, results, 374 



Holmes, T.: female functional diseases, 
136-137; infant mortahty, 270; 
varicose veins, Frankfort, 144-145 

Home Duties. See Domestic duties 

Horner, Leonard: efficiency, 348- 

349,350 
Hospitals, London: petition for early 

closing bill, 515-516 

Hotels and Restaurants: California 
Supreme Court, 552-556; Chicago 
conditions, total, 551; hours, 549; 
Labor Laws and their Enforce- 
ments, etc., 550; Miller, F. A., 
552-556; United States, 550-556; 
U. S. Congress, 550 

Hours of Work. See Long hours; 
Regulation of hours; Shorter hours 

Howard, Henry: bad effect of long 
hours on health, 132-133 

Howard, Robert: Fall River, intem- 
perance in, 234 

Howell, Wm. H., Text Book of Physiol- 
ogy: chemical changes in muscles, 
108-109 

Ho WICK, Viscount: state and industry, 
237 

HuTCHiNS, B. L., The Employment of 
Women in Paper Mills: home life, 
427; overtime and organization, 
447; overtime bad economy, 442; 
women not displaced by regulation, 
3917392 
Gaps in our Factory Legislation: ef- 
ficiency, 352; monotony, 46; over- 
time prohibition, 448; speed of 
manufacture, 28 

HuTCHiNS, B. L., and Amy Harrison, 
History of Factory Legislation: 
adaptation of customers to shorter 
shopping hours, 531; customers' 
orders, 409-410; good results of 
regulation, 294-295; improved ma- 
chinery, 386; saleswomen, fatigue, 
512; state control of women's 
labor, 390; women's physical ca- 
pacity, 5 

Hygiene. See Handhuch der Hygiene; 
International Congress of Hygiene; 
Reference Handbook, etc. 

Hyndman, H. M.: future generations, 
effect of women's work on, 261 



INDEX 



577 



Illinois: laundry conditions in, 497 
Bureau of Labor Statistics: time of 
women at work and going and com- 
ing, percentages, 260 
Factory Inspectors' Report: domes- 
tic duties of women workers, 259; 
irregularity of employment, 454- 
455; light work prolonged is in- 
jurious, 322; value of legislative re- 
striction of hours of labor, 297-298 

Illness. See Continuance at Work 
during Illness; Morbidity 

Imbert, a.. Industrial Accidents and 
Insurance: fatigue as an agent in 
producing accidents, 192-193 
Overwork as a Result of Occupation: 
need of rest, loo-ioi; period of 
gestation and weight of offspring of 
working women, 274 
Statistics of Industrial Accidents: 
hours of the day when accidents are 
most frequent, charts, 194-198 

Improvements in Manufacture, 384- 
387 

Industrial Accidents. See Accidents 

Infant Mortality, 269-276 

Infectious Diseases, 161-163 

Injuries to Various Organs by Over- 
strain, I 51-15 5 

Instituts Solvay, Travaux du Labora- 
toire de Physiologie, Tome VI. 
Fasc. 4: muscular fatigue, 86-87 

Insurance: accident statistics, Ger- 
many, 204-205, 208; industrial 
accidents and, 192-193 

Insurance Societies. See Sickness 
Insurance Societies 

Intemperance, growth of, 227-236. 
See also Temperance 

International Association for La- 
bor Legislation: domestic duties 
of women workers, 258; fatigue, its 
nature, 60; hours of work vs. severe 
work, 322; legislation, need of, 
334, 335; nervous fatigue, 70-71 

International Association of Fac- 
tory Inspectors of America: im- 
portance of movement for shortening 
working time, 300; intemperance, 
235; leisure, how used by working 
classes, 309-310; speed in manufac- 
ture, 36-37; ten-hour production 
/; as good as eleven-hour, 370, 374 

37* 



International Association of Ma- 
chinists: speed in manufacture, 
40-41 

International Conference in Rela- 
tion to Labor Legislation, Berlin, 
1890: countries with shorter day 
have maximum of production, 357 

International Conference of Con- 
sumers' Leagues: overtime in 
clothing trades, 443; overtime 
wages, evil of, 458-459; sewing 
girls' overtime, 540 

International Conference on Sun- 
day Rest, 1889, 100 

International Congress of Hygiene 
AND Demography: accidents, hours 
of, 205, 206; accidents late in the 
day, 203; attention, fatigue of, 216, 
218-219; fatigue, 54, 55-56, 58- 
59; general health, 127-128, 130; 
gestation and weight of offspring of 
working women, 274; infectious 
diseases, 161; injurious occupa- 
tions, 115-116; intemperance, fac- 
tors in, 231; monotony, 46; mor- 
bidity, general, 11, 12, 14-15; 
muscular fatigue, 84-85; need of 
rest, 95-96, 98-99, loo-ioi; ner- 
vous diseases among working people 
as shown by sickness insurance sta- 
tistics, 178-181; nervous fatigue, 
71-73; neurasthenia among work- 
ing people, 164; overstimulation 
and nervous disease, 186, 187; 
overstrain, rush work etc., 425; 
overtime output, percentage of 
value, 438; physiological limits of 
work, 104-106; piece work, 49; 
protection of women from long 
hours and not exclusion from work, 
326; race degeneration from over- 
work, 281; relative length of work 
and rest, 11 2-1 13; special local 
overstrain and fatigue, 152- 
154; speed in manufacture, 36; 
state and normal working day, 
241; strain on special organs, 151- 
152; toxin of fatigue, 67-68 

International Congress of Medi- 
cine: public and individual health, 
240-241 

International Convention on In- 
dustrial Diseases: family life, 
429; monotony, 46-47; moral weak- 
ening through fatigue, 223-224 



578 



INDEX 



Invention: shorter hours a stimulus to, 

384 
loTEYKO, Mlle. J., The Laws of the 

Ergograph, a Physiological and 

Mathematical Study : muscular 

fatigue, 86-87 

Irregularity of Labor: undesirable, 
450-456 

ISLESWORTH INFIRMARY: total of dis- 
eases of laundresses and others, 494 

Italian Journal of Social Medi- 
cine: infectious diseases, 162-163; 
neurasthenics and pathology of la- 
bor, 168-169; piece work, 49; rail- 
way machine shops and accidents, 
209-210. See // Ramazzini 

Italian Workman's Society: continu- 
ance at work during illness, 1866- 
1875, 21; duration of illness, 17, 18 



Jacobi, Dr. Mary Putnam: mercantile 
employes, condition, 507-508 

J ACER, GusTAV, Human Energy: need 
of rest, 93 

Jam-making Industry: conditions, 486 

Jarvis, Edw.: injury of overwork, 131; 

state's interest in individual health, 

243 
Jay, M. Raoul, Is Legal Protection for 

Working People Necessary? State's 

need of preserving health, 242 

Jeans, Victorine, Factory Acts Legis- 
lation: benefit of overtime prohi- 
bition, 484-485; efficiency, 351; 
improvements in manufacture re- 
sulting from the Act of 1844, 385; 
state's need of preserving health, 
237 

Jena: PoHtical Society, 46, 94, 112 

Journal of Political Economy: future 
generation and health of mothers, 
268-269 

Journal of Social Science, etc.: light 
work injurious if prolonged, 322 

Journal of the Royal Statistical 
Society: mortality, 23; New 
South Wales, millinery, 431; wages 
of women, increase, 400-401; 
women not displaced by men since 
the Factory Acts, 389-390 



JuiLLERAT, Mme. A. Paul, Overtime: 
Abuses and Responsibilities: over- 
time in clothing trades, 443; rush 
work, evil of, 458-459; sewing 
girls, 540 



Kelley, Florence, Factory Inspection 
in Pittsburgh: injury of long hours 
of even light work, 323. See also 
Engels, Frederick 

Kennedy, John Lawson: long hours in 
Lancashire calico printing mills and 
results, 375-376 

Key, Chas. A.: air foul at night in 
shops, 420; light and easy work 
exhausting if prolonged, 319; phys- 
ical differences between men and 
women, 3 

KiDD, Percy: bad effect of long hours 
on general health, 120; continued 
work as injurious as hard work, 
319; saleswomen, health, 510-511, 
5 1 8-5 1 9 ; symptoms among women 
due to long hours of work, 4-5; 
varicose veins from prolonged 
standing, 145 

KiLGOUR, A. C: deterioration of de- 
scendants of factory workers, 260- 
261 

Kingsbury, Susan B. See Labor Laws 
and their Enforcement 

KoBER, Geo. M., Industrial Hygiene: 
fatigue a predisposing cause of dis- 
ease, 160; injury of constrained at- 
titudes, 155; morbidity and mor- 
tality, 15 

KoLLARiTS, Jeno, Nervous and Muscu- 
lar Fatigue : fatigue of the nervous 
system, 219-220 

KoNiGSBERG, GERMANY: temperance 
improvement, 290 

Krauss, Wm. C, Influence of Age upon 
the Production of Nervous Dis- 
eases: nervous fatigue, 78 

Krejcsi, E. R. J., The Length of the 
Working Day: accidents and fa- 
tigue, insurance statistics, 204-205; 
bad effect of long hours on health, 
130; injurious occupations, 115- 
116; speed in manufacture, 36; 
state and normal working day, 241 



INDEX 



579 



Keoniecker, Prof.: fatigue, 55; fa- 
tigued muscles, 90 
KuRELLA. See Borderland Problems 

Kydd, Samuel ("Alfred."), History 
of the Factory Movement from the 
Year 1802 to the Enactment of the 
Ten-hours Bill in 1847: need of 
rest, 102; uterine diseases among 
mill workers, 137-138 



Labor Laws and Their Enforce- 
ment: restaurant conditions, 550, 
552; store conditions, 508-509 

Labour Laws for Women: wages as 
affected by regulation of hours, 
399-400; women not driven out of 
employment by regulation, 388 

Lagrange, M.: fatigue, 60; overwork, 
77 

Lakeman, J. B.: overtime unnecessary, 
409; saleswomen, 510; standing 
and long hours, 516 

Lancashire, England: benefits of re- 
duced hours, 296; cotton mills, 
improvement, 294; female func- 
tional diseases, 135-136; injury of 
protracted labor, 277; intemper- 
ance, 227; long hours in calico 
printing and results, 375-376; 
wages of cotton operatives, 406 

Lancet Sanitary Commission, Re- 
port: long hours and standing for 
saleswomen, 518 

Lancet, The: Editorial overwork and 
need of rest, 102-103 

Larkin, Edmund R., A. Few Words on 
the Ten Hours Factory Question: 
reduced hours affect production 
and wages but little, 399 

Las Casas, M. de., The Weekly Rest 
Day: infectious diseases, 163 

Laundries: accidents, 492, 493, 497, 
498; accidents, time of day, 202, 
203, 203-204; beer, 499; character 
of work in power laundries by oc- 
cupations, 491-493; Chicago, 490- 
491; Clarke, S. A., and Wyatt, 
Edith, 497; Colorado Bureau of 
Labor Statistics, Report, 490; 
effect on health, 493-497; Ger- 
many, 424-425; Great Britain, 
489-490, 493-495, 498-499; tiours 



Laundries (continued) 

of work in U. S., 490-491; Illi- 
nois, example, 497; intemperance, 
230; long hours, 412, 413; morals, 
498-499; Oliver T., 489-490, 499; 
overtime, 466, 467, 468, 478, 483; 
present character, 489-493; shorter 
day output, 354; United States, 
490-493, 495-497 

Lavoisier, M.: fatigue, 56, 106 

Law. See Legislation 

Lawrence, Mass.: Atlantic Mills, 
time reduction and result, 367; 
intemperance and overwork, 225, 
233; leisure, 304-305; offspring, 
health impaired by mother's over- 
work, 267; Pemberton Mills, elev- 
enth hour work, 367; race degen- 
eration from overwork, 284 

La yet, Alexander, Industrial Labor of 
Women and Children: morbidity 
and duration of illness, 16-17 

Lee, Frederic S., Fatigue (The Har- 
vey Lectures): fatigue and appar- 
ent increase in working capacity, 
187-188; muscular fatigue, 87-88; 
nature of fatigue, 63-64; need of 
rest, 103; nervous fatigue, 78-79; 
toxin of fatigue, 69 

Leech, R. H.: infant mortality, 269- 
270 

Leeds, England: benefit of shorter 
hours, 290-291; industrial condi- 
tions, 483 

Lees, Cowan: air at night in shops, 421 

Legislation: to secure shorter hours, 
328-339 

Legs, Injuries from Standing. See 
Feet and legs, diseases of 

Leipzig: benefit of shorter hours for 
women, 316; continuance at work 
during illness, 1856-1880, 21; 
duration of illness, 18, 19; long 
hours in laundries, 123 

Leisure and Recreation: Opportuni- 
ties afforded by shorter hours, 
302-310. See also Evening leisure 

Leno, John B., An Essay on the Nine 
Hours Movement: family life and 
mental improvement, 426-427 

Leo XIII, Pope, quoted on the labor 
problem, 96 



58o 



INDEX 



Leroy, M., The Eight Hour Day: rela- 
tion of reduced hours to output in 
quantity and quality, 365-366 

Le Roy, M., A Study of Industrial Acci- 
dents: fatigue as a factor, 199-200 

Leubuscher, Dr. P., and Bibrowicz, 
W.: Neurasthenia in the Working 
Classes: age of incidence, 182; 
neurotic diseases and heredity, 184; 
piece work, 49, 171; sanitaria of 
the State Insurance Department 
(German), 171, 172; working 
classes, 170-173 

Lexis, W. See Handworterhuch, etc. 

Light and Easy Work injurious if pro- 
longed, 317-323 

LiLWALL, John, The Early Closing 
M9vement: working classes and 
insanity, 279 
The Half-holiday Question : efficiency 
349-350 

LiNDHEiM, Alfred R. von, The Mor- 
bidity and Mortahty of Occupa- 
tions: nervous diseases as occu- 
pation diseases, 180-181; over- 
stimulation, 187 

Loening, Edg. See Handworierbuch, 
etc. 

Loewenfeld. See Borderland Prob- 
lems, etc. 

Loewenfeld, L., On Mental Working 
Power and its Hygiene: nervous 
fatigue, 75-76; state and individ- 
ual health, 239-240 

London, Dr. : general predisposition to 
diseases among mill workers, 156 

London Medical Men: petition to 
Parliament, 511, 515, 519 

Long Hours Due to Overtime, 411- 
417. See also Efficiency; Shorter 
hours 
Looms: number tended, 37, 38 
Lost Time: making up, 464-465, 475 

Lubbock, Sir John: Early Closing Bill, 
515-516 

Lubenau, Dr., Heart Disease among 
the Working People of Berhn : neu- 
rasthenia, neurosis, etc., 175, 176 

Lyons, France: Mutual Aid Society of 
Sick Workers, duration of illness, 
16-17; mortahty statistics, 23, 24 



MacCormac, Sir W.: general predis- 
position to disease among mill 
workers, 157; moral and physical 
well-being interdependence, 221; 
offspring of weak parents, 524-525; 
physical capacity of women, 5; 
saleswomen, hours and conditions 
arduous, 51 1-5 12 

MacDonald, J. R., Women in the 
Printing Trades: legislation a bene- 
fit to employers, 330; overtime bad 
economy, 442 

MacKensie, W. Leslie: offspring of 
women workers, 262-263 

McKinley, Wm. : family Hfe, 429-430 

McVey, Frank L.: benefit of shorter 

hours, 301-302 
Maffei, Dr. R. See Pieraccini, G. 

Maggiora, Arnaldo, The Laws of Fa- 
tigue: muscular fatigue, 85-86, 89- 
90, 91, 92; need of rest, 100; ner- 
vous fatigue, 73-74 

Maine: 

Bureau of Industrial and Labor Sta- 
tistics, Reports: physical struc- 
ture of women with reference to 
standing, 8; saleswomen, 514; 
speed in manufacture, 36, 38; 
strikes as a result of fatigue, 225; 
domestic duties of women workers, 
258-259 
Senate Document: increased effi- 
ciency of workers with reduced 
hours, 366 

Malyn, John: on physical differences 
between men and women, 2 

Manchester, Eng.: conference of N. 
U. W. W. 1907, on speed of manu- 
facture, 28; death rate, 121; dura- 
tion of life, 277; industrial condi- 
tions, 483; N. U. W. W. Confer- 
ence, 1907, 45-56 

Mann, Tom, The Eight Hours' Move- 
ment: leisure and comfort from 
shorter hours, 302 

Manning, Cardinal: family life and 
long hours, 429-430 

Manufacture: improvements in, 384- 
387; strain in, 26-52 

Marks, Marcus M.: monotony, 47; 
workingmen's desire for self im- 
provement, 310 



INDEX 



581 



Martin, Rudolf, The Reduction of 
Working Hours in the Mechanical 
Textile Industry: long hours in 
Germany in 1830, 382-383 

Marx, Karl: on machinery, 32 

Maryland : 

Bureau of Industrial Statistics, Re- 
port: future generations, 268 

Maschek: classification of work, 102 

Massachusetts: 

Cotton industry, 345; culture for 
working classes, 306; short-hour 
laws, beneficial results in trade, 345 ; 
wages and hours of labor in i860, 
406-407 
Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Re- 
ports: bad effects of long hours on 
health, 132; Boston working girls, 
133; end-of-the-day work, 383; 
fair chance to all employers desir- 
able, 473; female diseases from 
standing and sitting, 140-142; fu- 
ture generations, effect of women's 
work on, 267; intemperance, 234; 
long hours and standing, 513-514; 
moral benefit of reduced hours, 225; 
physical degeneration and prema- 
ture old age, 285; physical differ- 
ences between men and women, 7; 
shorter hours and increased pros- 
perity, 344; state's right to interfere, 
243 ; ten-hour day more productive 
than eleven-hour, 366, 368; ten-hour 
law in England, benefit, 295; wages, 
effect of reduced time, 403-404 
Chief of District Police, Report: 
benefit of the ten-hour law, 297; 
health injury in mercantile estab- 
lishments, 514; legislation for 
women workers, 337; long hours 
mean reduced efficiency, 384; ten- 
hour law, benefits, 368-369, 371 
House Documents: bad effects of 
long hours on health, 131; general 
impairment of vital forces by fa- 
tigue, 160; legislation needed for 
women, 335; moral weakening of 
fatigue, 224-225; race welfare in 
peril from overwork, 284; uni- 
formity of hours, 479 
Legislative Documents, House: bad 
effect of long hours on health, 132; 
state's need of preserving health of 
women, 250; evidence in favor of 
ten-hour law, 1870, 225, 233, 267, 
284, 304, 429 



Massachusetts (continued) 

Senate Documents: intemperance, 
234; ten-hour day for women and 
children, 285; ten hours recom- 
mended by Committee on Labor 
Question, 367-368; report in favor 
of the Ten-Hour Law, 327 
State Board of Health: eye fatigue 
and bad light, 150-151; state's 
interest in individual health, 243 

Mather, Wm., The Eight Hours' Day: 
Salford Iron Works, abolition of 
overtime, 434 

Matheson, M. Cecile. See Cadbury, E. 

Maxey, Edwin, The Eight-Hour Day 
by Legislation : wages and hours of 
labor in Massachusetts and neigh- 
boring states, i860, 406-407 

Maximum Day, 381; necessity of, 464 

Mayence, Germany: temperance im- 
provement, 290 

Mayer, E. E., translator. See Oppen- 
heim, H. 

Medizinische Klinik: fatigue of at- 
tention, 219-220 

Mercantile ;Establishments : cus- 
tomers' adaptation, -528-531; 
health ,512-525; legislation needed , 
525-528; nature of work and com- 
parison with factory work, 505- 
512; voluntary action as to shorter 
hours, 526-528. See also Chicago 
Mercantile Establishments 

Mestre, M.: industrial accidents, 193, 
194-198 

Metal Trades: accidents in, 195, 200; 
in Germany, 208; hours of, 210, 211 

Method of Protection for women 
from factory evils, 328-339 

Metin, M. Albert, Social and Labor 
Legislation in Austraha and New 
Zealand : overtime pay, effect of, 458 

Michigan: 

Bureau of Labor Statistics, Reports: 
domestic duties of women work- 
ers, 259; future generations, pro- 
tection of, 268; ill health of mill- 
workers, 134; leisure for working 
girls, 307; reduction of hours 
for women by National Cash Reg- 
ister Co., 370; state's need of 
preserving health, 244; state's need 
of preserving health of women, 251 



582 



INDEX 



Military Recruiting, 282 

Miller, Frank A., 552-556 

Millinery Trade, 531-544; health, 
536-540; legal limitation promotes 
regularity, 541-544 

Mill WARD, Henry: efficiency, 350 

Milwaukee Tanneries. See Osgood, J. 

Minnesota: 

Bureau of Labor, Industries, and 
Commerce, Reports : overlong 
hours for women, 417; pelvic 
troubles from standing, 135; piece 
work, 50; speed in manufacture, 
38-39; state's need of preserving 
health of women, 251 

Moll, Albert, The Influence of the 
Life and Rush of Great Cities on 
the Nervous System: nervous dis- 
eases among working people, 167 

Moll-Weiss, Mme., fatigue, 60 

Monotony, 42-48 

Moor. See De Moor 

Moor, John: race degeneration, 277 

Moral Restraints: general loss of, 

221-227. See also Family life; 

Intemperance; Streets at night 
Morbidity: general, 10-15. See also 

Duration of illness 
Morgan, John: leg diseases from 

standing, 143; need of rest, 113 

MorITZ, III, 114 

Mortality, 23-25 

Mosso, A., Fatigue: analysis of fa- 
tigue, 55, 56-57; attention, 214- 
216; consciousness of fatigue, 70; 
ergograph described, 81-83, 88; 
eye fatigue, 148-149; fatigued 
muscles, greater strain on, 90-92; 
moral weakness, 223; muscular 
fatigue, 86, 87; nervous fatigue, 
74; speed in manufacture, 31-32 

Muhlhausen: Dolfuss' experiment, 
350-351. 379; infant mortality, 
274; still-births, 273 

Muller v. Oregon: opinion of Su- 
preme Court of the United States, 
558 

Mundella, Mr. : short-hour states and 
long-hour states, 378 

Muscular Fatigue, 80-88 



Napias, Henri, The Protection of 
Woman in Industry: future of the 
race, 266 

National Association for the Pro- 
motion of Social Science, Tran- 
sactions: infant mortality, 271- 
272; need of rest, 102; working 
classes and insanity, 279 

National Association of Clothing 
Manufacturers: monotony, 47 

National Child Labor Committee, 
Proceedings: fatigue of factory 
work, 147-148; standing occupa- 
tions, 514-515; state's interest in 
the people's physical well-being, 
246 

National Civic Federation, Indus- 
trial Conference : saloon and la- 
borer, 235 ; shorter hours, necessity, 
328; speed in manufacture, 40 

National Civic Federation Review: 
leisure for self-improvement, 310; 
monotony, 47; temperance and 
morality increased with reduced 
hours, 287-288 

National Conservation Commission, 
Bulletin: nervous fatigue, 79-80 

National Convention of Employers 
AND Employees: benefit of shorter 
hours, 301-302 

National Convention of Factory 
Inspectors in the U. S.: conserva- 
tion of manhood, 243-244 

National U^^ON of Women Workers 
of Great Britain and Ireland: mo- 
notony, 45; speed of manufacture^ 
28 

National Vitality, 79-80 

National Women's Trade Union 
Leaglt:, Convention: competition 
determines conditions, 474 

Nebraska : 

Bureau of Labor and Industrial Sta- 
tistics, Reports: benefits of reduced 
hours, 296; morals and mental re- 
sults of fatigue, 225; night work 
bad poHcy, 443-444; physical dif- 
ferences between men and women, 
8-9; state's need of preserving 
health of women, 251; street dan- 
gers at night for women, 432 

Neighborhood Department Store, 
502 



INDEX 



583 



Nervous Diseases: ages of incidence, 
181-183; fatigue and, 188-192; 
heredity and, 183-185; liability of 
working people to, 163-169; over- 
stimulation and, 185-188; prev- 
alence among working people as 
shown by statistics of foreign sick- 
ness insurance societies, 169-181 

Nervous Fatigue, 69-80 

Netherlands: infant mortality, 274 

Neurasthenia: defined, 61, 188-192. 
See also Nervous Diseases 

Newcastle: lead-poisoning, 10 

New England Civic Federation: 
monotony, 47 

New Hampshire: 

Governor's Message: protection of 
the worker by legislation, 336 

Home Journal: bad health of mill- 
workers, 130-13 I 

New Jersey: 

Bureau of Statistics of Labor and 
Industries, Reports: ill-health of 
mill-workers, 134; utility of state 
restriction of hours, 297; wages as 
affected by the Ten-Hours Act in 
England, 404 
Inspector of Factories and Work- 
shops, Reports: bad effect of long 
hours on general health, 133; foul 
air at night, 422; legislation a ne- 
cessity for regulating women's 
labor, 336; overtime prohibition, 
488; policy of the state in regulat- 
ing hours, 316-317; seats in stores 
514 

Newman, George, Infant Mortality, 
A Social Problem: accidents in 
laundries, 203-204; birth and death 
rate, 272; infant mortality in 
England and Wales, 272; offspring 
of women workers, 263-264 

New South Wales: 

Millinery trade attractive for short 

hours, etc., 431 
Legislative Assembly: minimizing 

the evils of the factory system, 323; 

overtime prohibition, 487; speed 

in manufacture, 31 

New York: 

Assembly, Reinhard Committee Re- 
port: condition of mercantile em- 
ployees, 507-508 



New York {continued) 

Bureau of Labor Statistics: acci- 
dents, hours of, 210; domestic 
duties of women workers, 259; 
family life and shorter working day, 
317; fatigue, 62-63; infant mor- 
tality in Alsace, Switzerland, Neth- 
erlands, etc., 274-275; intemper- 
ance, causes, 234; morbidity in 
Switzerland, 15; physical struc- 
ture of women, 8; short-hour law, 
conversion of its enemies, 298; 
short hour laws of Massachusetts 
and their benefit to the cotton in- 
dustry, 345 ; wages after reduction 
of time, 404-405 

Department of Labor: efficiency in- 
crease with shorter hours, 372; 
physical structure of women, 9 

State Factory Inspector's Reports: 
bad health from over long hours, 
133; legislation needed for women 
and children, 336-337; mental 
unfitness due to fatigue, 226; 
overtime an evil, 488; restricted 
hours a benefit to prosperity, 345; 
restriction of hours favored by 
women, 336; street dangers at 
night, 432; ten-hour day as good 
as or better than eleven-hour 
day for employers, 369, 370; ten- 
hour day too long, 134; wages after 
reduced hours, 404 

State Medical Association Transac- 
tions: fatigue, normal and patho- 
logical, 60-61 

New Zealand: 

Bureau of Industries, Report: family 
life and night work for women, 427 

Department of Labour Report: over- 
time high wage, 466; streets, dan- 
ger at night for women, 431-432 

Night Work. See Evening Work 

Nitti, Francesco S., The Laws of Hu- 
man Work: attention, fatigue of, 
213-214; consciousness of fatigue, 
70; exhaustion dependent on num- 
ber of hours rather than on sever- 
ity of labor, 322; fatigue, predis- 
position to diseases, 157-158; 
feeble will of fatigued workers, 222- 
223; long hours and inferior out- 
put, 383; need of rest, 98, 107-108 

Noise: Obersteiner on, 215-216 



584 



INDEX 



Nolan, Thos. M.: temperance in- 
creased with reduced hours, 287 

Nottinghamshire: Merino factory 
wages and reduced hours, 401 



Oakshott, Grace, Women Publishers: 
overtime bad economy, 434 

Obersteiner: noise and attention, 
215-216 

O'Connell, James: family and home 
improvement from shortened hours, 
317; speed in manufacture, 40-41 

O'Donnell, Thos.: uniformity of con- 
ditions, 479 

Officials: opinions as to overtime al- 
lowance, 480-488 

Ohio: 
Bureau of Statistics of Labor: do- 
mestic duties of working women, 

259 
Inspector of Workshops and Fac- 
tories, Report: health of women 
workers, 250; long hours and 
standing for women, 419 

Oliver, T., Dangerous Trades: intem- 
perance of laundry workers, 230; 
laundries, 489-490, 499; lead poi- 
soning, 10 
Diseases of Occupation, etc.: fatigue, 
53-54; leisure the workman's due, 
303; machinery, 222; muscular fa- 
tigue, 84; nervous fatigue, 77; 
speed of manufacture, 28, 29; tox- 
in of fatigue, 64-65 
Industrial Lead Poisoning in Europe : 
produced by longer hours, 116 

Ontario: 

Inspectors of Factories, Reports: 
efficiency, 353; legislation, effec- 
tiveness, 331; overtime prohibi- 
tion, 486-487; piece work, 50; 
speed in manufacture, 30. See 
also Scott, J. T. 

Oppenheim, H., Diseases of the Nervous 
System: neurasthenia, symptoms, 
189-190 

Optical Works : shorter hours and out- 
put, 360 

Optimum: 363 

Ordway, Dr: mill-work injurious to 
women, 131 

Oregon: Act of 1907, 488 



Organization, of industry: overtime 
avoidable, 444-450; seasonal trades, 
541-544 

Orme, Miss, 518, 522 

Osgood, L, Women Workers in Mil- 
waukee Tanneries: future genera- 
tion of working mothers, 268; girls 
overworked, 307-308; overtime 
wages, 460-461; piece work, 50- 
51; safeguarding women's health, 
251-252 

Output: overtime injurious to, 433- 
444; a measure of the worker's 
strength, 362; effect of long hours, 
375-384; effect of short hours, 346- 
375. See also Efficiency; Overtime 

Overstimulation. See Nervous dis- 
eases 

Overstrain in overtime work, 423-426 

Overtime: health endangered, 411- 
426; morals endangered, 426-432; 
prohibition, benefits of, 444-488; 
strain, 88, 423-426; telephone ser- 
vice, 547-549; wages, 456-463. 
See also Evening Work; Long 
Hours; Overstrain 

Oxford, Bishop of: long hours and 
reduced efficiency, 377 



Parez, C. C. Th., On the Measurement 
of Mental Fatigue in Germany: 
muscular fatigue, 81-83 

Peel, Sir R.: domestic duties of work- 
ing women, 253; race degenera- 
tion, 276-277 

Pennsylvania: 

Bureau of Industrial Statistics: ad- 
vantage of ten-hour law for all in- 
dustries and both sexes, 305 
Factory Inspector's Reports: better 
quality of production and more per 
hour with reduced hours, 370; gen- 
eral health injury from long hours, 
133-134 

Peterson, Frederick. See Church, A . 

pFLUGER, 109 

Phillips, Wendell: Ten-Hour Law 
petition, 234, 285, 327, 367 

Physical Differences between Men 
AND Women, i-io 



INDEX 



585 



Pic, p., Prohibition of Night Work of 
Women in Industry in France: 
overtime, 410; overtime frauds, 
470-471 

Piece Work, 48-52 

PiEPER, August, and Simone, Helens, 
The Reduction of Women's Work- 
ing Hours, etc.: domestic duties, 
additional burden to working 
women, 257; efficiency increased 
by shortened hours, 359; legisla- 
tion the duty of the state, 333; 
morbidity, 13; overtime exemp- 
tions and abuses, 471-472; over- 
time unnecessary, 410-41 1 ; women 
not displaced by men, 394 

PiERACCiNi, G., and Mapfei, R., Days, 
Seasons and Hours when Industrial 
Accidents Occur: accidents in rail- 
way machine shops in Italy, 209- 
210; piece work, 49 

Pittsburgh Survey. See Butler, E. 

B.; Fitch, J. A. 
Plener, Ernst von, English Factory 

Legislation: benefit of legislative 

regulation, 452 
Plumbism: produced by increased 

hours, 116 
Poisoning. See Toxin of fatigue 
Pope Leo XIII : quoted on the need of 

rest, 96 
Posen, Germany: bad effects of long 

hours, 123 
Price, George M.: effect of industrial 

labor on women, 9-10 
Pringsheim, Otto: infant mortality, 

274 
An Experiment with the Eight Hours 

Day: shortened hours, output, 357 

Prins, Adolphe: weekly rest day, 99 

Prinzing, F., Handbook of Medical 
Statistics: continuance at work 
during illness, 20-22; domestic 
duties, additional burden to women 
workers, 257-258; duration of ill- 
ness, comparative table, 18-19, 20; 
mortahty, 24, 25 

Private Initiative, inadequacy in at- 
tempts to improve labor condition, 
333-334 

Prohibition of Overtime. See Over- 
time, prohibition 



Prussia : 

Industrial Commission, 1894: bad 
effect of long hours, 122. See also 
Germany 

Queensland: 

Inspector of Factories, Reports: over- 
time high wage, effect of, 461-463 

Race Degeneration, 276-286 

Rae, John, Eight Hours for Work: 
Australian working classes, 299; 
efficiency, 352; moral improve- 
ment due to shorter hours, 289; 
personal efficiency and competition, 
377-378 

Ramazzini, II. See Italian Journal of 
Social Medicine 

Ranke: fatigue, 55, 57 

Rauchberg, H., Study of Workmen's 
Sick Funds in Vienna: mortality, 
23 

Recreation. See Leisure and recrea- 
tion 

Redgrave, A.: air in shops at night, 
420-421; earher shopping, 530; 
vmiformity of restrictions, 477 

Reference Handbook of the Medical 
Sciences, Hygiene of Occupation: 
on effect of industrial labor on 
women, 9 

Regulation of Hours: a benefit to 
general prosperity, 339-345 

Regularity of Employment: pro- 
moted by overtime prohibition, 
450-456 

Reinhard Committee. See New York 
Assembly 

Rest: need of, 93-110; length of time, 
111-116. See also Resting time 

Restaurants. See Hotels 

Restriction. See Regulation; Uni- 
formity 

Revue d'Economie Politique: public and 
individual health, 292 

Revue de Paris: dangers of night work 
for girls, 428; loss of sleep, 423; 
overtime work of sewing girls, 539; 
quality and quantity of output 
with reduced hours, 365-366; 
street dangers for women at night, 
431 



586 



INDEX 



Remie d' Hygiene, T. 26, 1904: bad 
health of textile workers, 128 

Revue Internationale de Sociologie: ex- 
haustion from prolongation and not 
severity of labor, 322; fatigue of 
attention, 213-214; need of rest, 
98, 107-108; will power, loss 
through fatigue, 222-223 

Revue Scientifigue: industrial accidents, 
192-198 

Revue Socialiste: augmentation of pro- 
duct with shortened hours, 365 

Rhode Island: 

Governor's Message, 1875 : bad effect 
of long hours on health, 132-133 

RiBOT, Th., The Psychology of Atten- 
tion: fatigue, 217 

Richardson, Benj. Ward.: diseases 
incident to long standing, 521-522 

Ritzmann, F., Work, Fatigue, and Re- 
cuperation: need of rest, 94-95 

Riviere, M.: long hours, disadvan- 
tage of, 380 

Robertson, Mrs., 37 

RocHARD, Jules: morbidity and dura- 
tion of illness, 16-17, 423 

Roebuck, J. A.: shorter hours and 
England's benefit, 298 

RoGET, Peter Mark: on physical 
differences between men and 
women, 3 

Ropke, III, 114 

Roth, Emil, Fatigue resulting from 
Occupation: accidents, hours of, 
205, 206; monotony, 46; nature of 
fatigue, 55-56; need of rest, 95- 
96; overstrain, 425; overtime out- 
put, percentage of value, 438; 
piece work, 49; psychic factor and 
neurasthenia, 178-180; special lo- 
cal overstrain and fatigue, 152- 
153; toxin of fatigue, 67-68 
General Industrial Hygiene and Fac- 
tory Legislation: adequate rest- 
ing time, in; bad effect of long 
hours on health, 126; duration of 
illness, 1 7 ; efi&ciency of early hours 
of day, 358; individual power of 
resistance to disease, 159-160; 
length of working time the impor- 
tant point, 321-322; race regenera- 
tion from shorter hours, 295; state 
and industrial hygiene, 238 



Roth, Emil {continued) 
The Influence of Working Hours on 

the Health of Workers in General: 

infectious diseases, 161 
Rousseau. See Waldeck-Rousseau 
Royal Statistical Society. See 

Journal of the Royal Statistical 

Society 

Sachnine, Ilia, Study of the Effect of 
the Length of Working Hours upon 
the General Health of Adults: at- 
tention, 218; bad effect of long 
hours on health, 128; chemistry of 
fatigue, 59-60; eye fatigue, 149; 
fatigued muscles, greater strain on, 
92; nervous fatigue, 77; oxygen, 
106 

Sadler, Mr.: uterine diseases among 
mill workers, 137-138 

Safety. See Accidents 

Saleswomen. See Chicago mercantile 
establishments; Mercantile establish- 
ments 

Salford Iron Works, Englanb: vol- 
untary reduction of hours and re- 
sult, 373» 379, 434 

Salomon, Alice, Labor Laws for Wom- 
en in Germany: overtime excep- 
tions, 472 

Sawyer, Chas. H.: legislative protec- 
tion for the worker, 336 

Saxony: infant mortality, 273 

ScHAEDLER, Dr.: morbidity, 12 

ScHAEFER, Dr., Protection of the Work- 
ingman's Health: efficiency of 
early hours of day, 358; injuries to 
health from evening work, 418; 
public health and a shorter day, 
238-239; speed in manufacture, 34 

Schmoller's Yearbook: night work, 12 

ScHONHALS, Paul, The Causes of Neu- 
rasthenia and Hysteria among 
Working People: attention, over- 
strain of, 219; nervous diseases 
among the lower working people, 
167-168, 176-178; nervous dis- 
eases and inherited disposition at 
Schonow Zehlendorf, 185 

Schonow Zehlendorf Sanitarium, 
167, 176-178, 179; nervous dis- 
eases and heredity, 185 



INDEX 



587 



ScHULER, F., Factory Hygiene and Leg- 
islation: accidents due to fatigue, 
208; protection and not exclusion, 
326; strain on special organs, 151- 
152 

ScHULER, Fridolin, and Burckhardt, 
A. E., Investigations into the Con- 
ditions of Health of the Swiss Fac- 
tory Workers: duration of illness, 
15-16, 17; effect of long hours on 
general health, 127, 128; injurious 
effect of standing, 147; morbidity, 
II, 12; piece work, 48; protection 
and not exclusion, 326-327; speed 
in manufacture, 35; uterine dis- 
orders, 139-140 

ScHUMBERG: muscular fatigue, 85; 
toxin of fatigue, 68 

Scope of Women's Work. See Em- 
ployment of women, etc. 

Scott, F. H.: nervous fatigue, 77 

Scott, Jean Thompson: danger of 
streets to women, 432; physical dif- 
ferences between men and women, 6 

Seasonal Trades, 531-544; organiza- 
tion, 541-544; overtime, 484-485, 
485-486 

Seats for Saleswomen, 506, 513, 514 

Sequin: fatigue, 56 

Service, Dr.: long hours and standing 
for saleswomen, 518 

Setschenoff, Prof. : relative length of 

work and rest, 112 
Shaftesbury. See Ashley, Lord 

Shanks, Dr.: general predisposition to 
diseases among mill workers, 157 

Shann, George. See Cadbury, E. 

Sharp, Francis: general predisposi- 
tion to diseases among mill work- 
ers, 156 

Sharp, Wm.: bad effects of long hours 
on health, 116 

Sherman, Porter, translator. See 
Brentano, Lujo 

Shop Girls: chronic fatigue, 178 

Shops. See Mercantile establishments 

Shorter Hours, necessity of: auto- 
matic adjustment of workers to, 
438; necessity for, 323-327; need 
of legislation, 328-339. See also 
Benefit to Society of; Efficiency 



Shuey, E. L., Factory People and their 
Employers: shortened hours, good 
results, 374 

Sickness. See Mortality 

Sickness Insurance Societies: Ger- 
many, 18; morbidity statistics, 
lo-ii, 13, 14; nervous diseases, 
prevalence, 169-181 

Simon, Jules: hours of work for wo- 
men, 249-250 

Simone, Helene. See Pieper, A. 

Sleep: Alfassa, G., 423; Arlt, J. von, 
423; Bauer, £., 423; chief value, 
73-74; French Minister of Com- 
merce, Reports to, 422; lack of, 
499-500; Revue de Paris, 423; 
Rochard, Dr., 423 

Smith, Samuel: bad effect of long hours 
on health, 117; physical differ- 
ences between men and women, 1-2 

Social Reform Society (Germany), 
Publications: morbidity, 13; over- 
time needless, 410-41 1 

SoMMERFELD, Prof.: hours of work vs. 
severe work, 322 

South Wales: 

Millinery workrooms, 412 
Speed in Manufacture, 26-42 

Sphere of Woman's Work not re- 
stricted by restricted hours, 387- 
395 

Stacey, J. A. : legislation, 526-527, 528; 
saleswomen's long hours and stand- 
ing, 517 

Standing: bad effects, 117, 122, 123, 
129, 135, 136, 148; laundries, 490- 
497; mercantile establishments, 
505, 507 

State's Need of Preserving Health 
OF Workers, 236-252 

Statistical Society. See Journal of 
the Royal Statistical Society 

Strain: manufacture, 26-52; mercan- 
tile establishments, 505, 506, 510; 
telephone service, 545-546 

Streets at Night: dangers to girls and 
women, 430-432 

Sunday. See Weekly rest day 

Supreme Court of the United States, 
opinion Muller v. Oregon, 558 



588 



INDEX 



SuTHERST, Thomas: effect of shop life 
on women, 4; future generations, 
effect of women's work on, 261; 
legislation, necessity, 330, 526; 
saleswomen's long hours and stand- 
ing, 516-517 

Switzerland: 

Factory and Mine Inspectors' Re- 
ports: bad health and long hours, 
127; legislation, need of, 335; rnor- 
bidity, 12; overtime bad policy, 
438; overtime, ofificials' opinion, 
487-488; relation of hours to out- 
put, 382; rest needed in injurious 
occupations, 115; results of reduced 
hours, 363-364; speed in manu- 
facture, 35; state and individual 
health, 240 

Mutual Aid Societies: sick relief and 
duration of illness in men and wo- 
men, 16 



Tait, Lawson: diseases of women from 
long standing, 522 

Tanneries, Milwaukee. See Osgood, J. 

Tatham, Dr. : infant mortality in Eng- 
land, 270 

Taylor, Elizabeth: female functional 
diseases, 135 

Telegraph Service, 141, 549 

Telephone Service, 544-549; char- 
acter of business, 544-546; health, 
546-547; overtime, 547-549; 
physicians' testimony, 546-547; 
strain, 545-546 

Temperance: growth with reduced 
hours of work, 286-290. See also 
Intemperance 

Ten-Holtr Law: Gray, Wm., argu- 
ment of, 366-367; Lawrence, Mass., 
evidence for, 225, 233, 284; Phil- 
lips, W., 234 

Ten Hours' Act, England: benefit to 
trade, 340-343, 34^; benefits, 295, 
296; effect on wages, 404 

Textile Industries: accidents, pro- 
portion (Belgium), 201; wages and 
regulation, 402; women and chil- 
dren's employment as affected by 
the Factory Acts, 389; women em- 
ployed in Germany, 393 



Textile Workers: benefits of short- 
ened hours, 294; Leeds, Eng.. 290- 
291; strain of machinery, 179-180 

Thackrah, Chas. Turner: general 
predisposition to diseases among 
mill v/orkers, 156 

Ticket Agents, Chicago elevated rail- 
ways, 556-557 

Tired Muscles. See Fatigued muscles 

TissiE, Phil, Fatigue and Physical 
Training: attention, 217; fatigue, 60 

Tolain, M.: long hours for women, 
415-416; overtime wages, 457-458 

Toronto, Canada, 30, 248 

Bell Telephone Co. : dispute respect- 
ing hours, 436, 544, 546-547; long 
hours, 415; physicians' testimony 
as to the strain, 546-547 

Toronto University, Studies in Po- 
litical Science. See Scott, J. T. 

TowLES, John Ker, Factory Legislation 
of Rhode Island: reduction of hours 
not a reduction of product, 375 

Toxin oe Fatigue, 64-69 

Tracy, Roger S.: on the physical ca- 
pacity of women, 8 

Training: 67, 68, 71-72, 73 

Travers, Benj.: adequate resting- 
time, 113; physical differences be- 
tween men and women, 4 

Tremenheere, 409-410 

Treves, Zaccaria: attention, fatigue 
of, 216; fatigue, 58-59; infectious 
diseases, 161; muscular fatigue, 
84-85; nervous fatigue, 71-73; neu- 
rasthenia among working people, 
164-166; overstimulation and ner- 
vous disease, 186; physiological 
limit of work, 98-99; women's 
physical capacity, 5 

Turin and Turin School. See Mosso , 
A.; Maggiora, A. 

TuTHiLL, Sir George L.: air foul at 
night in factories, 420; fatigue of 
standing, 143-144; physical dif- 
ferences between men and women, 3 



Ulm, 18 

Uniformity of Restriction: essential 
for enforcement, 464-472; essential 
for justice to employers, 472-479 



INDEX 



589 



United States: 

Bureau of Labor, Bulletin: factory- 
organization, 450; Chicago ele- 
vated railways, ticket agents, 556- 
557; Chicago saleswomen, hours 
of, table, 500-504; factory legis- 
lation, public opinion as to, 300- 
301; factory organization, 450; 
fatigue a predisposing cause of dis- 
ease, 160; infant mortality in Great 
Britain, 275-276; injury of con- 
strained attitudes, 155; legislation, 
need and value, 338; morbidity and 
mortality, 15; plumbism produced 
in Europe, by increased hours, 116; 
proportion of women in industrial 
occupations in Great Britain, 394- 
395; regularity of work, 455-456; 
saleswomen's long hours in Chica- 
go, 513, 529; telephone companies, 
544-546, 547-548; uniform appli- 
cation of best conditions, 473-474; 
wage increase of women from 1820 
to 1900 in the United Kingdom, 
table, 405-406 

Commissioner of Labor, Report: re- 
duction of hours and output, 373- 
374 

Congress, Documents, etc.: acci- 
dents, hours of, 210-213; Christ- 
mas rush, 513; family and home 
improvement from shorter hours, 
317; intemperance among girls in 
Fall River cotton mills, 234; la- 
borers better consumers with shorter 
hours of work, 306; laundries, 490- 
493, 495-497; long hours in Chica- 
go mercantile establishments, 500, 
504-505, 506; piece work, 51-52; 
shorter hours improve laborer and 
do not injure business, 373; speed 
in manufacture, 37, 39-40; tele- 
phone companies, 544-546, 547- 
548; temperance and good morals 
increased with reduced hours of 
work, 287; waitresses, 550 

Industrial Commission, Report: ad- 
vantage of short work day to the 
whole people, 299; equal efl&ciency 
with shorter hours among women in 
testing bicycle balls, 371-372; 
Gompers, Samuel, on overtime 
wages, 460; legislation, 337; men- 
tal and social improvement from 
shorter hours, 306; race degenera- 
tion, 285; short-hour states vs. 



United States: 

Industrial Commission, Report (con- 
tinued) 
long-hour states, 372-373; shorter 
hours the only remedy, 327; speed 
in manufacture, 37-38; uniformity 
of conditions, 479 

Vaillant, Edouard, Labor Legislation 
and Regulation from the Stand- 
point of Hygiene: morbidity, 14- 
15; physiological limits of work, 
104-106; race degeneration from 
overwork, 281; relative length of 
work and rest, 11 2-1 13 

Van Kleeck, Mary, and Barrows, 
Alice P., How Girls Learn the Mil- 
linery Trade: seasonal nature of 
the trade, 533 

Varicose Veins: from long standing, 
142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147; laun- 
dry workers, 494, 496; saleswomen, 
518, 520, 522 

Verhaeghe, D., Inquiry into the Sani- 
tary Conditions in the Textile 
Trades in Lille and its Environs: 
bad health of textile workers, 128 

Verkauf, Leo: accident figures, 204- 
205 

Verworn, Max, Fatigue and Repair: 
nervous fatigue, 74-75, 104 

Vienna: 

Continuance at work during illness, 
21; long hours, 416; mortality, 
23; nervous diseases, 180-181; 
sickness insurance statistics as to 
incidence of accidents, 204 

Vogt, H., Causes of Alcoholism: exter- 
nal conditions as factors, 231 

Voluntary Organizations: inad- 
equacy for shortening hours and im- 
proving conditions of labor, 329, 
330, ZZZ, 334, 2,Z^, 525-528 

Waddington, M.: domestic duties of 
women workers, 258; industrial 
degeneration, 280-281; intemper- 
ance among French workers, 232; 
long hours of working girls, 451; 
overtime wages, 457; overtime 
work, 439; streets at night danger- 
ous, 430 



590 



INDEX 



Wade, Rufus R. : conservation of man- 
hood, 243-244; mental and social 
improvement of laboring class from 
shorter hours, 306 

Wages of Women : effect of regulation 
of hours on, 395-407. See also 
Overtime wages 

Waitresses. See Hotels 

Waldeck-Rousseau, p. 'M.: public 
and individual health, 241-242 

Walker, Francis A., Discussions in 
Economics and Statistics: leisure 
needed by the working classes, 308- 
309; reduction in time of work not 
all loss, 374; state intervention in 
labor contracts, 338-339 

Wandsworth and Chapham Infirm- 
ary: table of diseases of laundresses 
and others, 495 

Washington, Bureau of Labor Statis- 
tics and Factory Inspection, Re- 
port: conservation of womanhood, 
252 

Weariness. See Fatigue 

Weaver, G. S. : intemperance and over- 
work in Lawrence, Mass., 233 

Webb, Mrs. Sidney. See Case for the 
Factory Acts 

Webb, Sidney and Cox, Harold, The 
Eight Hours' Day: Beaufoy, Mr., 
447; customer's adaptation to 
shorter hours, 408-409; overtime 
at certain seasons, 447; protracted 
labor at any task injurious, 320 

Weber, A. F. : importance of movement 
for shortening working time, 300 

Weekly Rest Day, 99-100, 105, 109- 

iio, 163, 226-227, 235 

Weichardt, W., Methods of Estimat- 
ing Fatigue and Overfatigue : toxin 
of fatigue, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68-69 

West Cumberland, Eng., 289 

Weyl, T. See Handbuch der Hygiene 

Whitley, Margaret. See Bidley, A . 

Wing, Charles, Evils of the Factory 
System: long hours, rather than 
severity, injurious, 320 

Wirminghaus: morbidity, 13 



Wisconsin : 

Bureau of Labor and Industrial Sta- 
tistics, Report: future generation, 
268; girls over- worked, 307-308; 
health and labor, relation, 244; im- 
proved machinery, 387; legislation 
a benefit to employers and em- 
ployees, 338; overstrain a perma- 
nent injury, 426; overtime work 
and wages, 460-461; piece work, 
50-51; race degeneration, 285-286; 
regularity of employment, 455; 
regulation of industries, 286; safe- 
guarding women's health, 251-252; 
Salford Iron Works, England, 373; 
soundness of factory legislation, 
299-300 

Wolff-Eisner, Alfred, The Toxin of 
Fatigue, 64, 65-67 

Women Workers. See National 
Union of Women Workers 

Women's Industrial News, The: custom- 
ers' orders and overtime, 409; 
overtime bad policy, 434 

Women's Wages in England in the 
Nineteenth Century: wages best 
in regulated industries, 401-403 

Wood, George H., Factory Legislation, 
etc.: rise in women's wages, 400- 
401 ; women not displaced by men 
since the Factory Acts, 389-390, 
391 

Wood, H. C, Brain Work and Over- 
work: nervous fatigue, 78 

Work. See Continuance at Work, etc. 

Worms, Germany: working hours, 356 

Wright, Carroll D.: policy of the 
Federal government toward the 
working man, 307 

Wundt: phenomena of attention, 215 
WuRM, Emanuel, Honor to Women: 
morbidity, 13-14 

WtJRTTEMBERG, GERMANY: 

Accidents and fatigue, 207; bad effect 
of long hours, 124, 125-126; domes- 
tic duties, 255, 256; shorter hours' 
output, 354-355, 356-357; future 
generations, dependence on protec- 
tion of women workers, 265; ten- 
hour day for women, 248; textile 
mills, increase of work demanded, 
32s 



INDEX 



591 



WURTTEMBERG, GERMANY {continued) 

Factory Inspectors' Reports : bad ef- 
fect of long hours on health, 124; 
moral and spiritual desires of the 
working classes, 303; overtime and 
irregularity of work, 454; over- 
time and organization, 448; over- 
time and output, relation, 436; re- 
duction of hours and increase of 
work, 325; shorter hours, output, 
354-35 5> 356-357; speed in manu- 
facture, 33, 34 
Wyatt, Edith. See Clarke, S. A. 



Yellowlees, Dr.: bad effect of long 
hours on health, 1 19-120, 520 



Young, Thomas: ability of women to 
endure labor, 2 



Zehlendorf. See Schonow Zehlendorf 

Zeitschrift der Soziale Wissen- 
schaet: fertihty of women in in- 
dustry, 273-274 

Zeitschrift fur Gewerbehygiene, 
etc.: special overstrain, 152 

ZiTTAR, Germany: bad effects of long 
hours, 122 

ZuNTZ, Dr.: fatigue, physiology of, 54; 
muscular fatigue, 85; toxin of fa- 
tigue, 68 



^ 



THE SURVEY 

SOCIAL CHARITABLE CIVIC 

A JOURNAL OF CONSTRUCTIVE PHILANTHROPY 



npHE SURVEY is a weekly magazine for all those who 
A believe that progress in this country hinges on 
social service: that legislation, city government, the care 
of the unfortunate, the cure of the sick, the education of 
children, the work of men and the homes of women, must 
pass muster in their relation to the common welfare. 

As Critic, The Survey examines conditions of life and 
labor, and points where they fail : how long hours, low pay, 
insanitary housing, disease, intemperance, indiscriminate 
charity, and lack of recreation, break down character and 
efficiency. 

As Student, The Survey examines immigration, industry, 
congestion, unemployment, to furnish a solid basis of fact 
for intelligent and permanent betterment. 

As Program, The Survey stands for Prevention: Pre- 
vention of Poverty through wider opportunity and adequate 
charity; Prevention of Disease through long-range systems 
of sanitation, of hospitals and sanatoriums, of good homes, 
pure food and water, a chance for play out-of-doors; Pre- 
vention of Crime, through fair laws, juvenile courts, real 
reformatories, indeterminate sentence, segregation, discip- 
line and probation; Prevention of Inefficiency, both industrial 
and civic, through practice in democracy, restriction of 
child labor, fair hours, fair wages, enough leisure for reading 
and recreation, compulsory school laws and schools that 
fit for life and labor, for the earning of income and for 
rational spending. 



EDWARD T. DEVINE - - - EDITOR 

GRAHAM TAYLOR | 

PAUL U. KELLOGG - - ASSOCIATE EDITORS 

JANE ADDAMS J 

"^Tpyvo.r^^' $2.^ YEARLY 



'?■# 



^^ry^ 



572 



INDEX 



Electric-lamp Industry: monotony, 
39-40; piecework, 51-52 

Electric Works, 179-181 

Elevated Railways, 556-557 

Eleven-hour Day, 355 

Eleventh-hour Work, 132; 355; 366, 
367 

Ellesmere, Earl of: spoiled work due 
to long hours, 376-377 

Elliottson, John: light and easy work 
fatiguing if prolonged, 319 

Elli^, Havelock, Man and Woman: 
physical differences between men 
and women, 6 

Elsass-Lothringen: bad effect of long 
hours on health, 126 

Elster, L. See Compendium 

Employment of Women as affected by 
regulation: Ansiaux, M., 392-393; 
Bauer, E., 391; Belgian minister 
of Commerce and Labor, Report 
to, 392-393; Belgium, 392-393; 
Brassey, T., 387-388; British 
Association for the Advancement of 
Science, 390; British Sessional 
Papers, 387; Cadbury, E., 392; 
Case for the Factory Acts, 388; 
competition with men, 388, 392; 
Economic Journal, 391-392; Ger- 
many, 393, 394; Great Britain, 
387-392; Hutchins, B. L., 390, 
391-392; Journal of the Royal 
Statistical Society, 389-390; La- 
bour Laws for Women, 388; more 
regular when overtime is prohib- 
ited, 450-456; Pieper, A., 394; 
proportion of women in industry, 
394-395; Saxony, 393; textile in- 
dustries, 389, 393; United States, 
394-395; U. S. Bureau of Labor, 
Bulletin, 394; various industries 
employing women in Great Britain, 
1861-1901, 394-395; where de- 
mand is greatest, 392; Wood, G. 
H., 389-390, 391 

Encyclical on the Labor Problem, 
quoted, 96 

Encyclopedia of Hygiene and Pub- 
lic Medicine: morbidity and 
duration of illness, 16-17 

Engels, Frederick, Condition of the 
Working Class in England in 1844: 
monotony, 44; pelvic diseases, 138 



Erb, Wilhelm, The Increase of Ner- 
vousness in our Times: neuras- 
thenia among the poor, 170; neu- 
rasthenia and fatigue, 188-189 

Ergograph, 71, 73, 74, 80, 81-83; de- 
scription, 81-83, 88 

Ergographic Curve, 87 

Erismann, Dr. : evils of night work, 418 

Evening Leisure: special benefit of, 
310-317 

Evening Work After Day Work, 
417-419 

Eyesight: injuries from long hours, 
148-151, 420 

Exemptions from regulative laws. See 
Uniformity of restriction 



Fall River: cotton industry, 479; 
cotton mills, intemperance, 234; 
mills' reduction of hours, 367 

Family Life, 426-430 

Fatigue, 52-64; American Institute 
of Instruction, Sixty-fifth Annual 
Meeting, 62; Baker, Henry S., 62; 
Beard, 61; Biedermann, 58; Brus- 
sells Congress of Hygiene, 1903, 54; 
Carrieu, M., 59; Compendium of 
Political Science, vol. I., 54-55; 
Cowles, Edw., 60-61; Du Bois- 
Reymond's discovery, 57; Fletcher, 
55; Gautier's experiments, 57, 59; 
general medical views, 52-64; Gep- 
pert, 58; Harvey lectures, 63; Her- 
ing, 58; Herkner, H., 54-55; Her- 
zen, 59-60; increase, rate of, 90- 
91; International Congress of Hy- 
giene and Demography, 54, 55-56, 
58-59; Kraus, 55, 58; Kronecker, 
55; Lagrange, 60; Lavoisier, 56; 
Lee Frederic S, 63-64; Mosso, A., 
56-57, 64; New York Bureau of 
Labor Statistics, 62-63; New York 
State Medical Association, 60-61; 
Ohver, Thomas, 53-54; passive, 
"waste of power," 362-363; 
Ranke, 55, 57; Roth, Emil, 55-56; 
Sachnine, Ilia, 59-60; Sequin, 56; 
Tissi6, 60; Treves, Zaccaria, 58- 
59; Zuntz, Dr., 54, 58. See also 
Accidents; Attention; Fatigued 
muscles; Muscular fatigue; Ner- 
vous diseases; Nervous fatigue; Rest; 
Toxin of fatigue 



INDEX 



573 



Fatigued Muscles: greater strain 
upon, 88-93 

Favill, Henry B., The Federal Chil- 
dren's Bureau: state's interest in 
the physical well-being of the 
people, 246 
Industrial Hygiene and the Police 
Power: health and labor, relation, 
244; mandatory measures best in 
labor reform, 338 

Feet and Legs: injuries from long 
standing, 142-148 

Felix, Jules, The Influence of Working 
Hours on the Conditions of Health 
of Working People: need of rest, 

lOI 

Female Functions and Childbirth, 
135-142, 520-525 

Fere, Chas., Work and Enjoyment: 
attention and memory, fatigue of, 
218; fatigue, effect of, 214; in- 
fectious diseases, 163; maximum 
muscular work, 86; moral weakness 
due to fatigue, 224 

Fish-curing Trade: exemption from 
law, 468 

Fisher, Irving: national vitality and 
fatigue, 79-80 

Fitch, John A., The Steel Workers: 
intemperance, 236 

FiTCHBURG, Mass. : bicycle ball factory, 

371-372 
Flat Foot: from long standing, 142, 

143, 145, 146, 147, 514-515, 520 

Fletcher: fatigue, 55 

Florence, Italy: industrial accidents, 
209 

Forel, August, Hygiene of Nerves and 
Mind in Health and Disease: ner- 
vous hygiene of women, 7 

France: 

Chamber of Deputies, Debates, etc.: 
industrial degeneration, 280-281; 
intemperance, 232; long hours of 
working women, 415; ov^ertime 
wages, 457; overtime work, 439; 
streets at night dangerous, 430 

Factory Inspectors' Reports: dress- 
making and millinery, overtime, 
539; exemption from and abuses of 



France: 

Factory Inspectors' Reports {con- 
tinued) 

restrictive laws, 469-470; over- 
time bad economy, 440, 443 ; over- 
time prohibition, 449; overtime 
wages, 458; regularity of employ- 
ment, 454 
Labor Office, Bulletin: increased pro- 
duction per hour with shortened 
day, 365 
Minister of Commerce, Reports to: 
family life, 427-428; lack of sleep, 
injury of, 422-423; street dangers 
for young girls, 430 
Senate, Parliamentary Documents, 
etc.: domestic duties of women 
workers, 258; hours of work for 
women, 249-250; long hours for 
working women, 415-416; over- 
time wages, 457-458 

Frankfort: continuance at work 
during illness, 1896, 21, 22; dura- 
tion of illness, 18, 19; shortened 
hours, 356 

Frankfort a. d. Oder: health of wom- 
en in textile mills, 34 

Freiberg, Albert H., Some Effects of 
Improper Posture in Factory La- 
bor: fatigue and injury of stand- 
ing, 147-148; standing occupa- 
tions, 514-515 

FucHS, Dr.: efficiency increased by 
shorter hours, 359 

Future Generations, effect of wom- 
en's overwork on, 260-269. See 
also Race Degeneration 



Gardner, Robert: efficiency, increase, 
347 

Gaskell, p., Artisans and Machinery; 
The Moral and Physical Condition 
of the Manufacturing Population: 
miscarriages of factory women, 137 

Gautier: fatigue, experiments, 57, 59 

Gehrig, F., The Results of Child Labor 
as judged from the Physicians' 
Standpoint: diseases peculiar to 
women from sitting and standing, 
140 

Geppert: fatigue, 58 



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